The Circuit Rider Program ended in October 2016. 
If you would like a professional consultant to visit your site, please visit the Collection Needs Assessment Program: Site Assessment page on the GHHN website.

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The Circuit Rider program is currently being offered through the Connecting to New York's Collections administered by Greater Hudson Heritage Network (GHHN), which is funded through a generous 'Connecting to Collections' Implementation Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) through the Fall of 2016.

What is a Circuit Rider?
Historically, the term referred to the clergy in the earliest years of the United States who were assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. 

Our “Circuit Riders” are a team of statewide independent trained professionals in the field of collection management and conservation.  Each of the 9 regions of New York State will provide grant-funded Circuit Rider site visits for a total of 90 Circuit Rider site visits.  The Circuit Rider will come to your organization for a half-day site visit focusing on a topic that is determined in advance. The site visits are available to historic house museums, historic sites, historical societies, libraries, and archives. Circuit Riders will discuss various areas of stewardship with you, help identify your specific collections issues, suggest and prioritize basic steps to improve care of your collections, review your existing documents and forms, provide you with templates, and suggest site-specific resources. Best of all, the program is completely FREE to participants who apply during the grant period.

How the CR Program Benefits Your Institution
The Circuit Rider program is tailored to meet the needs of individual sites and offers an opportunity for site staff and board members to meet personally with the Circuit Rider in an informal, supportive, and consultative setting. These half-day site visits are intended to help identify your specific collections issues and set priorities for improving collections care at your institution that staff and board can practicably accomplish in the next one to two years. Circuit Riders help small collecting institutions develop preliminary strategies for improving collections care by identifying and prioritizing actions you can practicably take to implement improvements. The program will also help provide templates and identify resources you can use to draft basic collections policies, forms, and procedures for adoption and implementation. Information obtained from the Circuit Rider visit may be used as support materials for the American Association of Museum’s Collections Stewardship Assessment Program (CSMAP), the Heritage Preservation’s Conservation Assessment Program (CAP), and the Museum Assessment Program (CAP).
 
What to Expect
No preparation is needed. You need only plan for staff/board members (paid or volunteer) who work with collections to meet with the Circuit Rider for a half-day site visit. The visit will include tours of your exhibits and collections storage areas, discussion about your specific collections issues and suggestions to help you address them. Following the visit, the Circuit Rider team will prepare a short 3 page report that addresses collections needs at your institution, accompanied by a prioritized list of recommended low-cost steps to help you improve collections care and management over the next 1-2 years, and a list of specific resources to help you accomplish them. 
 

How to Apply for a Circuit Rider
Applications will be reviewed by GHHN’s Technical Assistance Committee, which includes collections management experts from across the state. The program is competitive due to the overwhelming interest and the limitation of only 5 site visits per region per grant year. Private institutions and for-profit venues are not eligible. Priority goes to organizations who have not already had a Circuit Rider visit.

Requirements:
● Site is a collecting institution (museums, libraries, archives)
● Site is open to the public (not a private collection)
● Site has an educational component
● Institution is a not-for-profit
● Institution is not in the process (approved or scheduled) of having another type of collections needs assessment (MAP or CAP)

Questions? Contact Priscilla Brendler, GHHN Executive Director at 914-592-6726 or at d[email protected]