assigning significance of collections - south west museums council mapping david hill collections...
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Assigning Significance of Collections - South West
Museums Council Mapping
David Hill
Collections Development Director
SW Collections held by
• Local Authorities• Independent bodies• Universities • Local societies • Charities• Private• Commercial
SWMC activities:
• Advises museums on their development • Advises local authorities on museum strategy• Advises government departments on regional
museum issues• Advises funding organisations of regional
development needs• Developing a regional information and data
service for museums
Reasons for using WMRMC methodology
• No point in reinventing the wheel
• Very little time to get this done
• Reassure our membership
• Common approach
1999section 1- management data • Governance
• Registration status
• Visitor numbers
• Levels of collection care – based on range statements
• Access assessments - based on range indicators
1999Section 2 - Collections
• Collection headings based on MGC’s DOMUS database e.g. archaeology, fine art, geology etc
• Estimated number of items in a collection – approximate numbers ok
• Definitions of Significance – local regional and national (Designated also added)
• Percentage of significance under each collection heading
2000
• A new category - General interest was added as mapping extended to non-registered museums including private collections etc
• Existing criteria broken down into a table of definitions and key indicators
• A new category assigning quality of the collection mostly based on the amount of information linked to a collection
Benefits of Mapping
• Best value benchmarking and comparisons by museums
• Regional advocacy at strategic meetings with national and regional agencies
• Advising funding bodies e.g. European (objective one), assessment of bids for HLF
• Advising special interest bodies and collection initiatives
Problems 1
• Definitions and criteria are clumsy, hard to apply difficult to interpret
• Collection headings are not applied in the same way in different museums
• Many museums have not counted their objects, especially where documentation systems are underdeveloped
• With self-assessment there is a natural tendency to “cook the books”
Problems 2
• Different understanding of the definitions e.g. regional highly problematic
• Perception that nationally significant material is the only important collection type
• Criteria are too simplistic and do not take into account enough context
• Weak validation methods
Integrated Approach
• Collection Care Self-Assessment pack, based on the collection care range statements
• Criteria for assessing the significance of individual items part of report on agricultural collections
• SWMC has funded development of collection condition methodology based on sampling
• Collection survey programmes linked to mapping. Currently working on Aeronautical and Maritime collections
2001
• Online questionnaire and database
• Trend Analysis - three years worth of data now available
• Review of the criteria proposed for first year of SWMLAC business plan
The future
• Indication that new SRA’s will map, of so vital that there is central support
• Potential of integrated information resources • Museums may have been too inward looking
process • Terminology aimed at professionals rather
than the user • Perhaps a preoccupation at the object level
by museum documentation systems