Author: ubmjay001

Strategic Networks & Communications Manager

Categories
Research Process

Mapping Museums: Why bother?

Readers who have followed our blogs to date may have realised how much work, time, and money is involved in mapping museums across the UK. The team currently comprises of two professors, and two full time researchers, one in computer science and one collecting and analysing data. By the end of its four-year life span, the project will have cost over a million pounds. On a more personal note, I spent well over a year planning the project and writing a proposal and it now dominates a good part of my waking life, all of which begs the question: why bother? Why does this subject merit such personal, economic, and intellectual investment?

There are pragmatic reasons for the research. The lack of data and of historical research means that museum professionals and policy makers do not have a clear idea of when or where the independent museum sector emerged in the UK, or how it has changed. There is no long-term information on patterns of museums opening and closing, or of their subject matter. Museum professionals who have spent their working lives in a particular region, have been involved with the Area Museums Councils, or with a special interest group, may have a good grasp of the museums in their locale or remit, but their knowledge is not always documented or relayed. In consequence, younger staff charged with supporting museums or staff who are responsible for making decisions about funding may not always have a clear overview of the sector. By compiling a dataset of museums, and modelling trends, this project has the potential to inform museum policy and funding at a national level.

There are also historical reasons for mapping museums in the UK. The museums boom of the 1970s and 1980s (or possibly 1990s) is generally considered to be one of the most significant cultural phenomena of the late twentieth century and yet we know very little about it. Commentators of the time generally linked the rising number of museums to the conservative administration led by Margaret Thatcher, to the economic policy of the time, and to consequent de-industrialisation. This led to the wave of new museums being characterised as entrepreneurial, nostalgic, and often as politically reactionary, but there is very little evidence to substantiate those claims. It might be that many of the new museums were dedicated to rural life and were coterminous with the industrialisation of farming, or they may have focused on religion, or writers, or teddy bears. The Mapping Museums research will enable researchers to revisit the museums boom, and potentially to recast the museums of that period.

For me, though, the main point of the project is linked to who established independent museums and to the people still running them. Museums are generally discussed in relation to the national or public sector, while curation and other forms of museum work are understood to be specialised professional roles. And yet, in 1983 the Museums and Libraries Council commented that most of these new, small enterprises had ‘been set up in an initial wave of enthusiasm and volunteer effort’, and my initial research suggested that the vast majority were founded by private individuals, families, businesses, special interest and community groups. It is likely that amateurs drove the expansion of the museum sector. In identifying these venues and in documenting the work of the founders and volunteers, the Mapping Museums project will show how the recent history of museums was a grass-roots endeavour, or as Raphael Samuels put it, ‘the work of a thousand hands’.

©Fiona Candlin September 2017

 

 

Categories
Museum Snapshots

The Button Museum? It’s fastenating.

During the spring of 2009 a running joke appeared in the letters page of The Guardian newspaper. Prompted by a double-spread photograph showing rows of antiquated toasters on display at the Toaster Museum in Kettwig, Germany, one reader wrote proposing that a visit to the Toaster Museum might be followed by a trip to the Bread Museum in Ulm or the nearby Cutlery and Salt museums. More suggestions followed as correspondents recommended the Egg Museum in Soyans, the Chamberpot Museum in Munich, Szentendre’s Marzipan Museum (with its life-size marzipan sculpture of Michael Jackson), Condom’s Condom Museum, the Mousetrap Museum in Eifel, and a penis museum in Husavik, Iceland.

Numerous other curious collections were mentioned until, after some two or three weeks, the letters began to take on an overtly playful tone. While purporting to recommend museums, these missives were actually an exercise in making puns. Allan Blunden started the trend by commenting that ‘those not too set in their ways’ might enjoy a trip to the German Cement Museum, Josie Greenwood followed suit noting that the ‘Button Museum in Ross-on-Wye is fastenating’, and Malcolm Jones thought the Spam Museum in Austin Minnesota ‘a good place to fritter away a few hours’. Other Guardian readers found the Dickens House bleak, The Fan Museum cool, judged Limerick Museum pure poetry, and Dartmoor Prison Museum quite captivating. The recommendations even began to began to reference other running jokes on the letters page including one, which would be impossible today, about uses for empty 35mm film canisters.

At the time the correspondence appeared, I was just beginning to think about writing a book devoted to small museums that concentrated on particular types of objects or single themes, and particularly the domestic, culturally marginal, or ostensibly insignificant. Almost all of The Guardian readers focused on museums that fitted this category and thinking that they may be useful at some point in the future, I copied the letters down. Here are the first half now, the second set is to follow:

Having showcased the Toaster Museum in Kettwig it might be appropriate to follow with the Bread Museum in Ulm. It is forever engraved on the memory of several nephews and nieces, as was the Cutlery Museum (next to the Wallpaper Museum) in Kassel. Though my sister and I found them strangely entertaining! The Salt Museum was more hands-on. Some holidays just happen that way – sorry kids!

Gaynor Lewis, Smallburgh, Norfolk 4/04/09

 

Gaynor Lewis could link her visits to the Bread and Salt Museums with one to the Egg Museum in Soyans, in the Drome valley, France.

Robert Davis, London, 07/04/09

 

Readers hastening to Germany for the delights of Kettwig’s Toaster Museum, Ulm’s Bread Museum and the Wallpaper and Cutlery Museums should continue southwards for the Chamberpot Museum in Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich. Unmissable.

Kirsten Cubitt, Sheffield 10/04/09

 

No trip to Hungary is complete without a visit to Szentendre’s Marzipan Museum with its life-size model of Michael Jackson carved in marzipan.

Ian Clark, Chartham, Kent 11/04/09

 

Germany does not have a monopoly on unmissable museums. While on honeymoon in 2001, we went to the Musée du Cartonnage in Valreas, Provence. Cardboard has not been the same for us since.

Nina Young, Nottinghamshire 13/04/09

 

Then on to the Condom Museum in Condom

Jane O’Mahoney, Launceston, Cornwall 13/04/09

 

Don’t miss Neroth, in the Eifel region of Germany, where the Mousetrap Museum traces the development of a local cottage industry – making mousetraps from bent wire, sold by travelling salesman throughout Europe.

Anthony King, Bristol 16/04/09

 

Visitors to Koblenz it he 1960s will have unforgettable memories of visiting the ‘Binns’ Museum in the Ehrenbreitstein fortress, devoted to the processing of pumice and the manufacturing of breezeblock.

Jane Caplan, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford 17/04/09

 

The Whip Museum in Killer, Germany, takes some beating.

David Hemsworth, Haywards Heath, West Sussex 18/04//09

 

Once you’ve visited le Musée du Pruneau in Agen you’ll want to go regularly.

Don Jackson, York 18/04//09

 

Husavik in Iceland boasts a phallological museum exhibiting the penises of most of the islands mammals. It doesn’t yet have a human penis, although a local farmer is reported to have donated his – upon his death.

John Land, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk 20/04/09

 

For those not too set in their ways I recommend a visit to the German Cement Museum. It’s situated on the windswept outskirts of Henmoor on the road to Cuxhaven.

Dr. Allan Blunden, Liskeard, Cornwall 21/04//09

 

Visitors to the south-east of France should take their hats off to Le Musée du Beret in Nouy, between Lourdes and Paris.

Tim Nokes, Kendal, Cumbria 21/04//09

 

Why go abroad for unusual historical collections when you can visit the Prickwillow Drainage Engine Museum in fenland Cambridgeshire.

John Loader, West Wilton, North Yorkshire 22/04/09

 

I am quite a fan of The Fan Museum in Greenwich. It is so cool

Tom Frost, London 22/04/09

 

The Button Museum in Ross-on-Wye is fastenating

Josie Greenwood, Worksop, Nottinghamshire 23/04/09

 

Have the courage to visit the Bottle Museum – run by the wonderfully named Codswallop Trust – at the Elescar Heritage Centre near Barnsbury.

Stuart Currie, Barnsley, South Yorkshire 24/04/09

 

Does the Baked Bean Museum of Excellence in Port Talbot set the pulses racing?

Alan Paterson, Cambridge 24/04/09

 

None of them are a patch on the Quilt Museum and Gallery in York

Steve Bradley, York 24/04/09

 

Surely after the Bottle Museum the next step would be to see the Flessenscheepjes (ships-in-bottles) Museum in Enkhuizen, Holland. And while you’re there, you might as well look in the Sigarbandjes (cigar band) Museum in Volendam

Willem Mejs, Birmingham 27/04/09

 

The Sewing Machine Museum in South London left me in stitches

Tom Bolger, Woodbridge, Suffolk 27/04/09

 

Since this series is going to run and run, I suggest you find time for the clock museum at Upton Hall near Newark.

Rev. Tony Bell, Chesterfield, Derbyshire 28/ 04/09

 

I went to the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot Idaho. Who could resist the strapline ‘Free baked taters to Out-of-Staters’. They had the original Dan Quayle ‘potatoe’ and some potato ice-cream that I would not recommend.

Neil Skilling, Loanhead, Midlothian 28/04/09

 

Anyone visiting Dumfriesshire might find interest in the Savings Bank Museum at Ruthwell

Neil Forrest 29/04/09

 

The Dickens House is bleak

Jan Pitt, London 29/04/09

 

Why not whip along to the leather museum at Walsall?

Ian Joyce, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire 30/04/09

 

I’m sorry Jan Pitt found the Dickens House Museum so bleak. She shouldn’t have gone with such great expectations.

Phillip Stephenson, Cambridge 30/04/09

 

I’ve heard that the Museum of Country Life near East Kilbride is the best in its field

Colin Montgomery, Edinburgh 01/05/09

 

The Lawrence Sterne Museum in Coxwold is xxxx xxxxx x xxxx

Patrick Wildgust

Shandy Hall, Coxwold, N. Yorkshire 01/05/09

 

To say nothing of Waregub’s “Museum which ought to be in a Museum”

Geoffrey Pogson, Gillingham, Dorset 01/05/09

 

Always a popular starter – Arnay-le-Duc’s Soup Museum

Bob Johnson, Durham 02/05/09

 

The Colour Museum in Bradford should be on any list of buildings to see before you die.

Cliff Challenger, Bradford 02/05/09

 

None of the museums can cut it like the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, USA

Dave and Moira Emmett, Leeds 04/05/09

 

The Museum of London is just capital

David Joss Buckley, London 04/05/09

 

Only a blip on the map, but the Radar Museum, Neatishead, Norfolk is well worth a visit.

Don Baines, Malden, Essex 05/05/09

 

The British Lawnmower Museum of Southport is a cut above the Mustard Museum of Wisconsin.

Bob Mays, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire 05/05/09

 

06/05/09

Tar for mentioning the Asphalt museum, Sacramento, California

Louisa Burville-Riley, Seveoaks, Kent

 

Limerick Museum, pure poetry.

Brian Hodkinson, Assistant curator, Limerick Museum, 05/05/09

 

Dartmoor Prison Museum – quite captivating

Johnny Ray, Dorchester, Dorset 07/05/09

 

Steve adores the Museum in Docklands

Moira Duhig, London 08/05/09

 

The Keswick Mining Museum in Cumbria is quite oresome

Chris Drinkwater, London 09/05/09

 

Wigan Museum has no peer

Eric Stanier, Macclesfield, Cheshire 09/05/09

 

The Discovery Museum in Newcastle is a great find.

Robin Campbell, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear 11/05/09

 

Missed the Oyster Museum while visiting Whitstable. Oh shuck.

Paula Evans,

Whitstable, Kent 11/05/09

 

Pull out all the stops and visit the St. Albans Organ Museum

John Bailey, St. Albans, Hertfordshire 12/05/09

 

It’s funny that no one’s mentioned the Museum of Humour and Satire in Gabrovo, Bulgaria.

Mike Whittaker, Rugby, Warwickshire 12/05/09

 

The sad news that all the Victorian exhibits are having to be sold off would suggest that the Shambles Museum in Newent is in a bit of a mess.

Max Perkins, Frome, Somerset 12/05/09

 

Maybe your readers would like to ‘get on up’ to the Sex Machines Museum in Prague.

Dan Adler, Farnham, Surrey 13/05/09

 

The Manx Kipper Factory and Museum. Smokin’

Steve Pinder, London 14/05/09

 

I’m rooting for le Musée de la Truffle, Périgord

Colin Virden, Mattlock, Derbyshire 14/05/09

 

Amsterdam has its Sheepvaart Museum but I wasn’t brave enough to go in.

Fergus Lang, Irby, Wirral 15/05/09

 

The River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames is more than just a load of old rowlocks.

Chris Whitehead, Hambledon, Oxfordshire 15/05/09

 

There used to be a Museum of Atheism in Shkoder, northern Albania, but I don’t believe that it exists anymore

Brian Ferris, Tunbridge Wells, Kent 16/05/09

 

You should try to squeeze in a Visit to the Concertina Museum in Derbyshire

Robert Bigio, London 16/05/09

 

The Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare must be an uplifting experience

Julian Dunn, Great Haseley, Oxfordshire 18/05/09

 

Have a look through Sunderland’s glass museum

Chris Williams, Rufford, Lancashire 19/05/09

 

There is a Hat Museum in Stockport that has a rival in Narbonne in France. There is a lot of titfer tat between them.

John Banbury, Marple, Stockport 19/05/09

 

Kidderminster’s new carpet museum will take some beating

Clliff Wilmott, Bewdley Worcestershire 21/05/09

 

Hurry to the submarine museum in Gosport – there are fears it’s going under.

Clare Ash, Southsea, Hampshire 21/05/09

 

It’s good that the Hancock Museum is reopening after a £26million redesign and rebuild. Ought to be worth half an hour of anyone’s time.

Anthony Bramley-Harker, Watford 22/05/09

 

I found a visit to the Museum of Lifts in Brussels and elevating experience.

Pat Nicholls

St. Neots, Cambridgeshire 22/05/09

 

A visit to the Tinplate Museum in La Tour Blanche, Dordogne gave me unalloyed pleasure

Ian Churchill, Leeds 23/05/09

 

The Gustav Holst Museum in Cheltenham is on another planet.

Susan Davis, Cheltenham 25/05/09

 

© Fiona Candlin August 2017

Categories
Research Process

Building the Database

The Mapping Museums project is an interdisciplinary one between Arts and Computer Science and as such a challenge in many ways as discussed in the earlier blog on “Interdisciplinarity“. The project is being run using an iterative and collaborative methodology, as the data collection often leads to new knowledge that needs to be modelled and retained. This incremental accumulation of data and knowledge means that flexibility is important so as to be able to respond to frequent changes.

We, therefore, use a Semantic Database to store and describe our data: semantic databases are also known as Triple Stores and they store pieces of information in triplets of the form Subject-Predicate-Object. For example, the fact that the Science Museum is located in London would be stored as the triplet Science Museum-hasLocation-London. The data model that describes entities (such as museums and locations) and the relationships between them (such as hasLocation) is sometimes called an Ontology.

This kind of data model can easily be extended with new triplets as new data and knowledge accrue. It can also easily be integrated with other already existing ontologies, for example relating to geographical regions and types of museums. Equally important, it allows us to describe in fine detail the different relationships between entities.

In our project, the data is first recorded within Excel spreadsheets. It is then converted into a triplets format to load into our database.  We encode the metadata, e.g. the data types and relationships, directly within the spreadsheets as additional header rows, so as to keep the model and the data “in sync”.

In more detail, the processing of the Excel spreadsheets comprises several steps:

  1. The spreadsheet is converted into a CSV (comma separated values) file.
  2. The metadata is converted into a graph, defined in the Graffoo language.
  3. This graph is processed into a number of templates, to be used for converting the data into RDF (Resource Description Framework) and RDFS (RDF Schema).
  4. These templates are used to convert each row of the CSV file into a set of triplets to be loaded into the database (which is stored using Virtuoso).

Once the database has been created, we use it to support a web-based user interface allowing users to explore the data:

 

By using semantic technologies to describe and store the data, we can support a flexible user interface that will allow users to explore spatial and temporal relationships in the data in order to begin to answer the research questions around independent museum development in the UK.

© Nick Larsson, August 2017

Categories
Research Process

The Smallest Museum in the UK?

In 1983 the Museums and Galleries Commissions noted ‘many’ of new museums being established across the UK were ‘very small’ enterprises that had ‘been set up in an initial wave of enthusiasm and volunteer effort’. Surveying the sector in 1990, Victor Middleton thought that by far the majority were ‘very small’ and the historian Raphael Samuel, who wrote that ‘one of the most remarkable additions to the ranks of Britain’s memory-keepers was the multiplication of do-it-yourself curators and mini-museums’, corroborated his observations. Likewise, our research has identified hundreds of tiny museums, which has prompted us to ask: how small can a museum be?

 

In the museum profession, size has been and is measured in various ways. A common way of doing so is to consider visitor numbers. The problem here is that micromuseums do not necessarily keep a record of visitor numbers or publish that information. We do know, however, that the William Lamb Sculpture Gallery only received 350 visitors at their last count and that the Wessex Water Museum totalled a mere 252 visitors (Figures from Museum Association 2017)

 

Alternatively, size is judged according to income. The Arts Council, Museums Galleries Scotland, and MALD in Wales all stipulate that museums must be accredited in order to receive funding, and it is rare for micromuseums to have to capacity or the resources to reach the required standards and put in the applications. This means that they are reliant on ticket sales or donations. In a few cases the museum may be profitable, but for others the revenue is low or may even run at a loss. The 700 or 800 visitors who pay £2 apiece to visit Barometer World in Devon, generate some £1400 to £1600 a year, but the cost of printing and delivering the museum’s publicity material runs to some £7,500 per annum.

 

Staff numbers provide another measure of size. We know that there are numerous museums that have no paid staff. One such venue is the Ipswich Transport Museum, although they have numerous volunteers who collectively manage a relatively large-scale enterprise. In order to qualify as really tiny, a museum would have only a few volunteers.

Ipswich Transport Museum

 

A less common approach is to consider the floor space of a given venue. The Woolpit Village Museum in Suffolk is the smallest museum in the county but at 33m2, it is whopping in in comparison to the Mundesley Maritime Museum in Norfolk, which occupies the ground floor of a tiny building, the upstairs being taken by the local coast guard. It is a petite 15m.

Alternatively, size is assessed in relation to the extent of the collections. ICOM considers any museum that has a collection of less than 5,000 objects to be small, but making such estimations is problematic in the contexts of micromuseums who do not generally have a catalogue of their holdings or formally accession objects. This makes it difficult to decide what is part of the collection, and what is there to provide context or for decoration. Even so, the Alfred Corry Museum in Southwold must have a fighting chance for the title of smallest museum because arguably it has only one object in its collection – the lifeboat after which it is named – the other exhibits consisting of reproduced photographs. The lifeboat is, however, a very big object, and it is quite possible that there are museums with a single, rather small exhibit.

Alfred Corry Museum

 

Perhaps the smallest museum would be the one that scores minimally in all categories of visitor numbers, staffing, income, floor space, and collections size, in which case I would like to make a nomination for the smallest museum in the UK – the very splendid Raisbeck Dame School House in the village of that name, in Cumbria.

Raisbeck Dame School House

 

This redoubtable venue is a tiny stone building on two floors, each being some 9m2. Downstairs there are some five panels explaining that it was once a schoolhouse and was preserved as a museum in the 1982. The panels also record that local residents campaigned to save it and raised money to produce the information panels. Since then it has received no funding, and there is no admission charge. There are no objects on display beyond the building itself, it has no staff and no volunteers, although a nearby resident does act as an occasional caretaker, and the visitors’ book records the presence of around 300 people in three years. There may have been others who did not sign their names but given its rather remote location it is unlikely that it would have played host to crowds. By any measure, Raisbeck School is an exceedingly small museum.

 

Do you have any other suggestions for smallest museum in the UK? If so let us know what they are and why you think they qualify.

 

©Fiona Candlin July 2017

 

Categories
Research Process

Interdisciplinarity

When Fiona Candlin and I first met up in 2015 to discuss the possibility of a research project that would create a database and visualisations relating to the UK’s independent museums sector, I was immediately intrigued. I knew from my previous experiences working on interdisciplinary projects to build specialist knowledge bases that this would be a challenging endeavour – and so far the Mapping Museums project has not disappointed!

The challenges faced in these kinds of interdisciplinary research projects are numerous:

  • the research programme cannot be tackled through expertise and methodologies arising from one discipline, but require multi-, cross- and interdisciplinary approaches;
  • gradual development of a common language of discourse is needed between researchers from the different disciplines: often a term has different meanings in different disciplines, e.g. words such as “design”, “Implementation”, “testing”, “ontology”;
  • from the point of view of the computer scientist, there is typically a lack of well-defined “requirements” at the outset of the research project; identifying a commonly agreed initial set of requirements is a necessary first step, on the basis of which we can then begin to research and design initial prototype software;
  • the production of initial prototypes typically leads to the elicitation of additional and more precise requirements, which often contradict the initial requirements!
  • because the very nature of research is open-ended and non-predictable, the research project progresses in this iterative and collaborative way, comprising successive cycles of
    • requirements elicitation
    • research
    • design
    • implementation
    • trialling

All stages involve the whole project team, as well as possibly additional domain experts and stakeholders.

In the case of the Mapping Museums project, it was evident from the outset that the gradual collection of diverse data and the gradual development of understanding about the required functionality of the database and visualisations would require this kind of iterative and “agile” methodology to be adopted by the research team.

This also pointed to the need to adopt “semantic” technologies in order to develop the database and visualisations, which are better suited to incremental data gathering and knowledge creation than more traditional relational database approaches.

Developing graphical conceptual models of the museums data from the outset of the project has also allowed us to develop a common understanding of the information that the database will contain:

 

The first 9 months of the project have resulted in a first version of the database, and in the conversion of our conceptual models into a formal ontology. We have also started to experiment with some initial data visualisations:

 

© Alexandra Poulovassilis

Categories
Events

AIM! I’m going to map forever…

Last week the Mapping Museums team attended the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) annual conference hosted at Chatham Historic Dockyard. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the foundation of AIM, which itself gives a good indication as to the moment when the growth of independent museums began to gather pace. As our project is working to map historical trends within the independent museums sector, the conference gave us the perfect opportunity to talk to colleagues with a long and deep involvement with independent museums and to meet those who had recently joined the organisation.

More specifically, we attended the conference for two reasons. The first was to create greater awareness of our project, which we hoped would help forge connections among both professionals and those responsible for running individual sites. The second was more prosaic; we aimed to actively gather data from delegates over the course of the two-day event and put more museums on the map!

Publicising the project

The main method of communicating Mapping Museums was a lecture as part of a session on partnerships between universities and museums. The project’s Principal Investigator, Professor Fiona Candlin, provided an overview of our project, emphasising that the museums sector currently lacks comprehensive data, and that our research would chart the growth of independent museums in relation to a host of cultural, political and economic factors.

Professor Fiona Candlin addressing attendees of the AIM conference

 

The lecture was well attended and this exposure led to both  conversations with sector staff who approached the project team later in the day and a significant increase in activity on our Twitter feed (@museumsmapping). These interactions were helpful for a few reasons. On the one hand we were able to discuss forms of practical help for the project and establish new contacts. But for the most part it was reassuring to exchange stories about the difficulties we face with issues like defining museums and knowing that these are shared problems (and frustrations!) across the sector.

It was also useful to talk to subject specialists about issues particular to their museums. Chatting to a delegate responsible for historic windmills about whether they should be counted as museums, she offered her insight that they should so long as their primary operating revenue came from visitors, rather than auxiliary uses such as producing artisanal flour. Meanwhile, delegates from a historic ship talked to us about whether it should be referred to as a museum or as a visitor attraction, and the difficulties of mapping some vessels that could be moored in different locations.

A highlight of the conference was the opportunity to meet Rob Shorland-Ball, a long-time AIM member and museum consultant who was responsible for depositing the AIM archive at the University of Leicester. By doing so he has been instrumental in helping us to record around 200 (often closed) museums that we have found looking through this material, and which we may not have located otherwise. It was great to inform him about the project and thank him for his efforts. Such interactions, particularly with historical data collection, have helped to humanise the research.

 

Delegates helping with the data collection

In terms of the practical matter of collecting data at the conference, we did this by manning a stall in the exhibition hall. Here delegates could come and talk to the project team, check to see if their museum was in our database and add (or amend) their entry if not. In particular we were eager for delegates to tell us if museums were open or closed, and to give us an idea of their subject matter. The benefit of this was that experts – people ‘on the ground’ working at these museums– could corroborate, and add to, our data.

To make the process as easy as possible we created A3 paper catalogues of our database with entries listed in alphabetical order. This meant that delegates could easily browse entries and had enough space to make additions We also had our computer database on hand in case of any problems in finding museums (for example, if the Barnstaple Museum was recorded as the Museum of Barnstaple).

AIM delegates helping with our data collection

 

In addition to this, we also had on show a prototype of our computer mapping model, demonstrated by Nick Larsson, the project’s computer science researcher. The benefit of bringing the model (and we needed to a substantially reconfigure a laptop to do so!) was that visitors could experience the whole of the research process; once they had checked their entry they were able to see how the data would be visualised and its functionality, and thus think about how they could use such a resource once it is finalised.

The vast majority of the delegates that we spoke to were very enthusiastic about the project and some returned to the stall with their friends to encourage them to participate. As a result, delegates made additions to data over 60 entries and offered suggestions of museums were hadn’t heard of. As a result, we are now aware of the John Lewis Heritage Centre, the Christchurch Tricycle Museum (1984-1999), and the Wigston Folk Museum (1981-1990)! We were also given names of regional experts and offers of help to map museums at a local level. Indeed, despite the cutting-edge technological aspect of the project, our ability to collect (often obscure) information is still largely reliant on traditional forms of networked knowledge; an old fashioned form of crowdsourcing.

New data!

 

Overall, the conference was a success on a number of fronts. Our project is much more visible as a result and we have a trove of data and helpful regional contacts. Beyond these tangible outcomes, the most encouraging aspect of the exercise was to be realise that we are working as part of a sector of professionals who have a great deal of enthusiasm for a project detailing museum history, and who are willing to do as much as they can to help add to this knowledge.

 

© Jamie Larkin          June 2017

Categories
Research Process

Getting Started: Compiling the Data

The Mapping Museums project aims to identify trends in the growth of independent museums from 1960 to 2020. In order to conduct our analysis we need to be able to interrogate longitudinal data for a number of museum variables, including years of opening and closure, size, and status change. At present, no such database exists that would allow us to do so. Ironically, for a sector committed to the preservation of cultural memory, documenting the institutions that participate in these activities is seemingly much less of a priority (see ‘Problems with the Data’ post). Thus, the first objective of the project was to create a functional database that catalogued all of the museums that have existed in the UK since 1960.

Before we began building this database we first considered the logistics of the process, namely the point during our timeframe when it would be best to begin to collect the data. Should we put together a snapshot of the nation’s museums as of 2016 (estimated at 2,500 at the outset of the project) and work backwards, or begin with a baseline of around 900 museums that existed in 1960 and work forwards? The former would give us a solid foundation but might require tortuous weaving back through name changes and amalgamations; the latter would give us fewer museums to start with, but might be easier as we attempted to record individual museum trajectories.

The solution was a compromise based on time and the availability of data. Between 1994 and 1999 the Museums and Galleries Commission ran a programme that produced the Digest of Museum Statistics (DOMUS). It involved annual reporting from museums that participated in the scheme in the form of  lengthy postal surveys. The information captured included address, registration status, visitor numbers and many other characteristics. While some limitations with the data have been highlighted in retrospective analyses (specifically by Sara Selwood in 2001), the baseline data that DOMUS provided was sufficient for our needs.

Using this as a starting point enabled us to begin with detailed information on nearly 2,000 museums. This snapshot of the museum sector in the late 1990s provided us with the flexibility to work both forwards and backwards in time. In particular, having records of museums at an interstitial stage of their development has been helpful in tracking (often frequent) changes of name, status, location and amalgamations.

The major problem with the DOMUS survey was accessing the data and formatting it for our use. After the project was wound up in 1999 the mass of information it had generated was deposited at the National Archives. However, given the complex nature of the data, there was no way of hosting a functional (i.e. searchable) version of the database. Consequently, it was archived as a succession of data sheets – in a way, flat-packed, with instructions as to how the sheets related to one another.

The first task was to reassemble DOMUS from its constituent parts. This meant trying to interpret what the multiple layers of documents deposited in the archive actually referred to. While the archival notes helped, there was still a great deal of deductive work to do.

Once we had identified the datasheet with the greatest number of museums to use as our foundation, the next step was to matchup associated data types held in auxiliary sheets into one single Excel master sheet. To do so we used the internal DOMUS numbers (present within each document) to connect the various data to create single cell data lines for each individual museum. We slowly re-built the dataset in this way.

In some instances the splitting of the data – while presumably logical from an archival perspective – was frustrating from a practical standpoint. A particularly exasperating example was that museum addresses were stored in a separate sheet from their museum, and had to be reconnected using a unique numerical reference termed ADDRID. While the process was relatively straight-forward, there was always a degree of anxiety concerning the integrity of the data during the transfers, and so regular quality checks were carried out during the work.

The next step was to clean-up the reassembled sheet. Firstly, we removed anything from the data that was not a single museum (e.g. references to overarching bodies such as Science Museum Group). Second, we reviewed the amassed data columns to assess their usefulness and determine what could be cut and what should be retained. Thus, old data codes, fax numbers and company numbers were deleted, while any information that could potentially be of use, like membership of Area Museum Councils, was retained. We also ensured that the column headings, written in concise programming terminology, reverted back to more intelligible wording.

This formatting helped shape the data into a usable form, but the final step was to put our own mark on it. Thus we devised specific project codes for the museums, which was useful for recording the source of the data and managing it effectively moving forwards. To tag the museums we decided on a formula that indicated the project name, the original data source, and the museum’s number in that data source (e.g. mm.DOMUS.001). Once our database is finalised, each entry will be ascribed a unique, standardised survey code.

Ultimately, the DOMUS data has acted as the bedrock of our database. It provided a starting point of 1848 museums and thus the majority of our entries have their basis as DOMUS records (which have been updated where applicable). One of our initial achievements is that the DOMUS data is now re-usable in some form, and this may be an output of the project at a later date.

A wider lesson from this process is the importance not only of collecting data, but ensuring that it is documented in a way that allows researchers to easily access it in the future. When our data comes to be archived in the course of time, the detailed notes that we have kept about this process – of which this blog will form a part – aim to provide a useful guide so that our methods and outputs can be clearly understood. Hopefully this will allow the history of the sector that we are helping build to be used, revisited, and revised for years to come.

© Jamie Larkin June 2017

Categories
Research Process

Problems with the Data

When I first began this research I had assumed that there was very little data on the museums that were founded in the late twentieth century. In fact, the contrary is true. A great deal of information has been collected about museums from the 1960s onwards. By our reckoning there were at least nine major cross-UK surveys, three that concentrated on Wales, two on Ireland, and one apiece on museums in Scotland and England. Dozens of smaller surveys concentrated on specific regions or aspects of the sector, Arts Council England keeps lists of museums across the UK, and the Museums Association runs a Find-A-Museum service. Why then, is it so hard to get information about the rising numbers of museums? In this blog I identify five reasons why this massive amount of data has not translated into information.

 

  1. Lost data

The first major survey that falls within our time period is the Standing Commission Report on Provincial Museums of 1963. Very conveniently, it is available in print form from major public libraries, and contains both the final report of the committee and a complete list of museums sorted according to region. From there onwards, however, the raw data largely disappears from government publications on the subject. The 1973 Standing Commission report, for instance, enumerates the different types of museums and provides an overview of emerging trends, but it does not provide a list of museums or the information that relates to individual venues, which we need if we are to track the emergence and development of the sector. As far as we know, the original data that was collected for that survey and for subsequent surveys conducted by the Standing Commission has been lost.

Research on museums conducted by other organisations is similarly missing. In 1983, the Association of Independent Museums (AIM) undertook a large-scale survey of that sector, but they do not seem to have published a report, and initially we were only aware of the survey’s existence from a handful of references in other contemporaneous sources. After some time, however, we found photocopies of the typewritten lists and the original survey questionnaires lodged in a university archive. We have been less successful in finding the information associated with the ‘UK Data base project’ of 1987. The Museums Association, which ran the survey, has a small in-house archive and its historic materials are kept at University College London. Unfortunately, neither archive contains any of the relevant materials. No-body in either organisation has any recollection of the survey taking place or any idea of where the material went, although it is likely that the UK Data base materials were thrown out when the Museums Association moved offices earlier this century.

  1. Indecipherable data

A second problem for researchers interested in the museums of the late twentieth century is whether the data is usable or not. One of the most important surveys of UK museums was the

Digest of Museum Statistics, otherwise known as DOMUS. From 1994 to 1998, it collected information on all accredited museums, some 1700, and generated a huge amount of material. When the project was closed, most of the paperwork was deposited in the National Archives and so researchers can easily find and download documents pertaining to the surveys. The problem is, the material is difficult to decipher. As well as some documentary material, the archive consists of three folders, each containing around fifty files that contain the raw data from DOMUS. All of the folders and files have coded names. The files comprise of spreadsheets with numerous columns that have similarly opaque headings. Some sheets are virtually empty, while others contain over two thousand entries. There is no explanation as to how these tables relate to each other, what the files or columns refer to, or how the user is supposed to decipher them. Using this data requires someone to unlock the coding system and re-constitute the original database.

  1. Data that is not easily accessible

The Museums Association currently compiles the most extensive dataset relating to UK museums. Their Find-A-Museum service lists information on the whereabouts, visitor numbers, staff, subject matter and governance of around two thousand museums. However, the Museums Association is a commercial enterprise and accessing this data incurs a fee. Users must pay to join the association and cover the subscription charges for the Find A Museum Service, at a minimum cost of around £186 for an individual or £450 for an organisation. In addition, the data cannot be downloaded or manipulated, and can only be examined via the service’s own rather limited search engine. Find-A-Museum is intended for museum professionals who want to look up information on specific venues, and is not designed with researchers in mind, but it does mean that one of the most substantial data sources on museums to be available in the UK cannot be used for broader analysis.

Other lists and surveys of museums are compiled by the various government bodies that oversee museums, namely, the Arts Council England (ACE), the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC), Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), and the Welsh Museums, Archives, Libraries Division (MALD). These organisations do not publish their data although they do make it available on request and without charge. In our experience, the four government bodies have been very helpful in the provision of data but we are aware that they do not have staff whose role it is to deal with such requests and there is no automatic or established mechanism by which data can be obtained.

 

  1. Incompatible data formats

Having acquired data from the various surveys and lists conducted by ACE, NIMC, MGS, and MALD, researchers will find that each of the government bodies collects different data, with significant variations in the level of detail, and about slightly different kinds of organisations over a range of dates. The spreadsheets cannot be simply merged. Moreover, if researchers want to include historic data, as we do, this all has to be transcribed by hand.

 

  1. Partial and missing data

On collating the available information, researchers might spot a further problem, which is that surveys and lists compiled by government bodies invariably concentrate on accredited museums. The accreditation scheme, which is co-ordinated by Arts Council England, establishes that a museum has achieved professional standards, but small independent museums often lack the staff or the know-how to apply for accreditation, or may not meet the criteria set by the scheme. Museums Galleries Scotland and the Museums Archives Libraries Division in Wales invite non-accredited museums to make themselves known and they do list such venues in their reports and on websites, although submitting data still requires a certain degree of professional capacity or interest. Thus as far as the official reports are concerned, small independent museums are routinely omitted. Indeed, the only survey to have actively sought information on such venues was the one conducted by AIM in 1982/3, and never published.

There are also other omissions. Properties owned by the National Trust register in some surveys and not in others, while few surveys include art galleries that do not have permanent collections, so established venues such as the Baltic in Newcastle or the Whitechapel in London rarely appear in the data.

Finally, information that is essential to a historically minded researcher is less relevant to museum professionals who focus on the current environment. Only one of the surveys registered the foundation dates of museums, and none have listed closure. Once the doors of a museum have been shut to the public, that venue ceases to appear in surveys.

 

In summary, then: Over the last five decades several associations and government departments have collected an enormous amount of information about UK museums. There is no lack of data. There are problems with archiving, making that information comprehensible and accessible, with sharing data across national and organisational borders, with collecting historical data and information on venues that do not reach professional standards or that do not quite fit an orthodox model of museums, and on compiling data. These factors help explain why researchers cannot elucidate recent developments within the museum sector and specifically the emergence of independent museums. There is a wider question, however, about why arts organisations seem to have been so poor at keeping, managing and sharing data. Thoughts on that matter would be welcome, as indeed would any clues as to the whereabouts of the data collected for the 1987 UK Museums database project and for Standing Commission surveys other than the 1963 publication.

©Fiona Candlin May 2017