Mission Statement
The Child Passenger Safety Online Museum & Archive is a not-for-profit operation dedicated to highlighting, contextualizing, and making accessible the history of child passenger safety as a public health movement. Through collaboration and invitation with and to all people in all communities with an interest in child passenger safety history, CPSOMA is dedicated to providing barrier-free access to historic materials as educational resources. By deepening the understanding of the mechanics and processes of child passenger safety legislation, technology, research, and advocacy, CPSOMA seeks illustrate and further the successful, yet unfinished, mission to eliminate child injury and death in motor vehicle accidents.
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Strategic Institutional Plan
The Child Passenger Safety Online Museum & Archive institutional plan is has four foundations: vision, values, goals, and tools. Each of these is mutually complimentary.
VISION
CPSOMA seeks to be an active contributor, by way of an educational repository, to the mission of eliminating childhood injury and death in motor vehicle crashes. In supporting the work of injury prevention professionals, school teachers, academic researchers, nationally certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians, and any member of the public wishing to make American roads safer, CPSOMA operates as a barrier-free resource where past triumphs and failures can serve as inspiration to interpret the past to construct a safer future.
VALUES
The central value of CPSOMA is the belief that historic items are for replication and learning, not financial valuation or practical isolation. We believe that knowledge—including its creation, implementation, communication, and evaluation—should not exclude any person and that equally, every person has the right to the responsible contribution and acknowledgement of their ideas and thoughts. CPSOMA advocates that power for positive change is based not in hierarchy nor formality, but rather diligent discussion, respect, and appreciation for the vision and goals of the institution. To visit is to contribute, making CPSOMA a unique cooperative museum where K-12 students, parents, and emeritus professors, and all others are equally important.
GOALS
CPSOMA seeks to encourage visitorship through offering opportunities for knowledge creation and active contribution. Moreover, CPSOMA is committed to a fully-digital vision of preserving historic items to enable easier access to all materials for as broad of an audience as possible. Additionally, CPSOMA seeks to support the work of institutions which have played such a significant role in the child passenger safety public health story such as Safe Kids Worldwide, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, and many others.
TOOLS
To achieve this vision, CPSOMA uses digital methods and processes including photogrammetry, CAD, 3D printing, wiki tools, and metadata generation. Wherever possible, CPSOMA processes and accessions materials and artifacts into the collections with open-source programs. The application of these tools is vital to ensure open access, and the sustainability of the management model whereby anyone may contribute to building and managing the collections and information.