People often refer to the Smithsonian Institution as the “nation’s attic,” but the people who work at the Smithsonian see it quite differently.  To them, the Smithsonian is more like an enormous free school for people of all ages, and most of its teachers are volunteers.  More than seven million people a year visit the National Museum of Natural History, which has a permanent collection of more than 126 million objects and over 535,000 square feet of public space. That’s as big as a large shopping mall. More than 450 full-time employees work at the museum, and more than 450 volunteers help the staff deliver the high quality programming the public expects.

“It’s a magnificent place that has earned its reputation, and the volunteers are a huge part of that success,” says Bill Watson, the museum’s Chief of Onsite Learning.  “Our volunteers who work with visitors are acutely aware that they are on the front lines of communicating the Smithsonian’s work to the public.”

Since the spring of 2008, Watson has been helping to revitalize the museum education office. One of his main tasks is encouraging the small groups of volunteers who work in separate parts of the museum to think of themselves as members of a single group with a shared identity.  This is not a simple task, because volunteers who assist with programming are spread far and wide throughout diverse places like the Insect Zoo, Discovery Room, Butterfly Pavilion, 19 permanent and temporary exhibitions, and the Naturalist Center,  which is located more than 30 miles away from the main building on Washington, DC’s National Mall. “Just finding out who the volunteers are and where they work has been a big job,” says Watson.  “As I continue to get to know them, I realize more and more that the volunteers share a real passion for the Museum and for natural history. They teach each other, which means that peer feedback is built into the system.”

The museum recently recruited 120 volunteers to staff the Sant Ocean Hall, an elaborate 23,000-square-foot exhibition that opened in September 2008.  Approximately one-quarter of them came through a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Regardless of their background, each volunteer went through more than 35 hours of training.  “It has been a tremendous advantage to have ocean scientists as volunteers on the floor, talking to visitors,” says Watson.  “But we also have volunteers from teaching backgrounds, and the mix is especially helpful.”  Scientists speak with authority, but teachers know how to communicate – and Ocean Hall volunteers who are scientists have learned a lot about communication from their teacher colleagues.

The Sant Ocean Hall has also provided opportunities for the more than 200 scientists and researchers who work at the museum to interact with the public. Through a program called “The Scientist Is In,” scientists bring some of the specimens they work with and some of the tools they use onto the museum floor. A different scientist participates every Wednesday for two hours. “We are really at an advantage here because our scientists work at a museum, which gives many of them a natural passion and flair for working with the public,” says Watson. One of the brightest spots of the program is the collaboration between museum scientists and volunteers. “The scientists rely on the volunteers to help them manage the crowds and convey their messages in different ways. It’s really a great opportunity for learning from each other.”

The Sant Ocean Hall is part of a larger Smithsonian Ocean Initiative which will soon expand to the internet. The Museum’s Ocean Portal will use state-of-the-art web and interactive technologies to create a community of citizens who understand their connection to the ocean and want to share their passion.  Watson says the Ocean Portal will challenge the education department because it will blur the distinction between audiences and teachers.  In the future, it’s possible that the museum will invite trusted Portal visitors to moderate and lead online discussions, as volunteers do in other web-based communities such as  Wikipedia.

“We are a lean department in a big place, so we need to think of our volunteers as staff and rely on them that way,” he says.  That means placing emphasis on training and performance evaluations; it also means putting out a volunteers’ newsletter, and re-starting a program that gives recognition for years of service. In the near future, museum volunteers will wear color-coded badges to show how many years they have served.  A green badge will mean that the person is a relative newcomer; a dark blue badge will mean they have served for eight years or more.  “Some of our volunteers have been here for thirty years,” says Watson.  “The color of the badge might not mean much to a museum visitor, but it gives the staff and other volunteers an instant idea of the experience level of the person they’re talking to.”

Watson says the National Museum of Natural History is eager to share ideas about its corps of volunteers: “We are a public institution, so we have a responsibility to try things out and make them available to other museums.  I’d love to hear from other museum educators about things they have done with their volunteers. We could implement good ideas we hear about. Because we’re part of the Smithsonian Institution, we are in an especially good position to spread the word.”