Lori Benson
Lori Benson is an independent museum professional based in Bath, ME. Ms. Benson has a B.A. in Biology and a Masters of Library and Informational Science specializing in rare books and archives. She started working at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) in 1990, as the Preservation Outreach Representative. After a series of project positions at MHS, including Assistant Moving Coordinator, she was hired by the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) as their first Collections Manager in 1994. She was the Project Director for the Research and Collections Division for the new facility planning and move. The project was published as Moving the Mountain, the Science Museum of Minnesota Guide to Moving Collections. In addition to her position at SMM, Ms. Benson was adjunct faculty at Dominican University/College of St. Catherine Department of Library Science, teaching Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials and Archives Administration in 2000/01. In 2003, she was hired by Texas Natural Science Center, the University of Texas at Austin (formerly Texas Memorial Museum) to de-accession their entire cultural collection. She was a University Affiliate until 2014. She has taught museum studies to undergraduates and given many talks and lectures on preservation, deaccessioning, project planning and moving. She is a member of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections, the Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists the American Association for State and Local History.