New Collections Management

What makes a museum a museum and not just a random collection of stuff?

What stops an object from just being a passive ‘thing’?

• A museum is a legal entity – we have a legal relationship to the objects in our collections

• A museum is a social entity – we have a social/ethical relationship with the object

• A museum is a creative entity – we extract meaning and connections from things

• A physical object is the trigger for a series of meanings, interpretations and associations

• A object of itself can inspire a reaction – aesthetic, emotional, non-rational

• An object plus the information about that object becomes something active and descriptive

• A collection of objects and their associations becomes a tool for narrating human history

A short history of MDA…

1971 The Museums Association sets up a Special Interest Group to look into these new-fangled ‘computers’

1977 The MDA becomes a separate body

1987 Museum Object Data Entry System (MODES) is launched

1994 First edition of SPECTRUM, the UK museum documentation standard

2001 SPECTRUM Knowledge: A Guide to Knowledge Management for museums

The real history…

• Geeks play with data

• Sector creates stock-control for objects

• Both strands get formalised into SPECTRUM

• SPECTRUM becomes a requirement of the Museum Accreditation Scheme

A note about: Accreditation

• Replaced the Registration Scheme

• Four sections

– Governance and management– User services– Visitor facilities– Collections Management*

• * Including SPECTRUM

What is SPECTRUM?

• 400+ pages long

• A procedural standard – a more or less sequential list of processes you will need to go through with the objects in your collection

• An information standard – a formal information architecture which gives standard definitions for the kinds of information you will collect about an object

How it works in practice

• When an object comes into the collection, give it a unique number

• Write down everything you know about it

• Every time something happens to the object, write that down too

• Rinse and repeat

Why document (the official list)

• For users:

– Find objects in your collections & in store– Answer queries from people– Respect the rights of others (eg. Data Protection)

– Unearth the histories of diverse/minority cultures

– Helps create learning & other materials

Why document (the official list)

• For your collection

– Monitor sensitive or at-risk items in the collection

– Prove legal ownership in the event of dispute

– Trace lost or stolen items– Inventory for insurance purposes

Why document (the official list)

• For your museum

– Identify objects for exhibition– Produce catalogues

– Increases credibility with funders and politicians

– Protects your rights (eg. Copyright)– Enables collaboration– Creates persistent knowledge (when Bob moves on)

The backlogs question

• A backlog is a perceived failure to keep your records as complete as possible

• Came about because we went mad with collecting between 1970 and 1990, but couldn’t be bothered with management

• Backlogs can quickly become a millstone – because you don’t know what you don’t know

• Backlogs are also used as a political weapon (you have to give us more money, look at the state of our backlog)

• There is no such things as a ‘backlog’

Backlogs

• A true backlog is a collection of objects for which there is no information at all, this is spectacularly rare

• People usually mean that they have some objects which either haven’t been formally accessioned into the collection or which only have incomplete information

• Incomplete information is fine – this is a long-term process, not a finite project

How to fix a backlog

STEP 1 Define your terms. What constitutes a backlog to your museum in the context of your users

STEP 2 Backlogs happen for a reason – get your house in order and stop it growing

STEP 3 Your backlog should now be (a) smaller and (b) manageable. Get to it!

MDA’s work

• UK’s focus for expertise in the management of collections

• Providing advice, guidance and training across 16 areas of collections management practice

• From documentation to digitisation, copyright, legal compliance and electronic publishing

What we believe

• We love museums. We love what they do and what they mean to people

• We believe that the UK enjoys the most vibrant and professional museum sector in the world

• We believe that museums should enjoy the same profile and celebrity as any of the other creative industries

Collections Link

• 550 standards, guidelines and factsheets

• 20+ publishers

• 16 areas of collections management practice

• Freely available online at www.collectionslink.org.uk

• Local-rate telephone advisory service on 0845 838 4000

• Give it a try!

Cultural Property Advice

• Detailed guidance and checklists on restitution, repatriation, theft and spoliation

• Written by industry experts

• For use by museums, private collectors and the art & antiquities trade

• Coming soon at www.culturalpropertyadvice.org.uk

The future

• We are at the beginning of the next big thing for museums

• Variously called ‘democratisation’ or ‘opening up’

• The idea is that the user community holds expertise and knowledge which should be used to interpret the collection

• The curator may not have all the answers

The future

• We will always need to document for accountability, but the real value of documentation is using knowledge and information to create stories and connections

• Opening up documentation to enable a two-way conversation with the community and with users

• Documentation is becoming more closely integrated into service delivery

• You will come across a sarky, conspiratorial attitude to documentation. Fight it.

The future

• Beginning to challenge some perceptions and learned behaviours

• It is OK (essential) to get rid of stuff as well as collect it

• We can be market-driven without dumbing-down

• New technology creates as many problems as it solves – we need to step back from the bleeding edge and go for solid and dependable