As a fairly new board member of the Museum of North Idaho, along with eight other more experienced and community minded board members who know the operation a lot better than I do, I figured I needed to get up to speed in a hurry if I was going to do this organization any good. So, I found out a few things. The museum is a nonprofit organization under the IRS Code (501-c3, to be exact) and has been an Idaho corporation since 1968. That means that contributions - some in the form of annual dues - are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Now, I am an engineer and not an accountant so you might check with the person who does your taxes whether that is a CPA, your husband, wife, or uncle Louis but probably any money you give to the museum will be tax deductible.

I also found out from our very capable museum director Dorothy Dahlgren that the organization was founded by a group of men belonging to the North Idaho Hoo Hoo Club who were unified by their interest in the timber industry; they wanted future generations to know how this area was logged and how sawmills operated in the early days.

So for anyone who thinks the Museum of North Idaho is some stuffy place where rich people go to look at paintings by long dead Europeans, you have another thing coming. Dorothy, by the way, is the full-time staff at the museum and is a wealth of information on many topics. She is the only paid employee and works with a slew of volunteers like me to keep the doors open.

The museum is housed in front of City Park in what was once a gas station and farm supply building which the city of Coeur d'Alene lets us use without cost; they also do the grounds maintenance. It is open from April 1 to Oct. 31 with about 6,000 people visiting each season, including more than 600 schoolchildren. The museum first opened in the Powder Magazine on the NIC Campus in 1973 and after moving to the park site continued to operate it as the Fort Sherman Museum with the support of the college. Along with being custodian of fort history, it provided outdoor space for many large logging and forestry artifacts such as a log jammer, smoke chasers' cabin, bateau and truck. The college, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and the museum are working to renovate the Fort Museum so it is closed this year. When the work is done, the Fort Museum will no longer be used to interpret timber history. All the large artifacts will be moved to temporary storage with the hope they can be displayed sometime in the future because we have not forgotten our forest history or the workers that made it.

Now all of this is information that an engineer like me has to be taught by professionals and longtime board members. But as an engineer, I do know this: the facility that we have is completely inadequate for this community.

We have just built a brilliant new library and the incredible Kroc Center. But the museum is housed in a sub-standard building that is a little dank from time to time, has moisture problems that affect artifacts we house, and is woefully too small to exhibit a simple portion of the museum's holdings of more than 7000 3-D artifacts, 28,500 images, and literature that tell the history of the Coeur d'Alene area. We currently use 4,000 square feet in an off-site storage building to house large artifacts, the textile collection, and the books the museum publishes and sells.

A while back, the museum signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the city to occupy a site at the corner of Northwest Boulevard and Mullan Road for a new museum; that agreement will be reviewed this year. A new building will add enormously to our community by creating another attraction, a unique place where we can educate our kids about our history and also proudly take visitors when they come to town. A new facility will open up the museum experience by allowing expanded public involvement and interactive viewing experiences. It will enable us to offer public meeting and work space for volunteers and other organizations. The prospects are limited only by our imaginations.

According to the American Association for State and Local History, "Being keepers and tellers of America's heritage and history in towns and cities across the land is a weighty responsibility ... that rests in the hands of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers and tens of thousands of paid professionals who do the work of the nation's history organizations." Some of those volunteers and paid professionals in North Idaho will soon be asking you to help build a new facility that is more in keeping with the high standards of this community as exemplified in the library and Kroc Center. As a volunteer, I hope you will help; as an engineer, I know you need to help!