Using the web to catch new audiences
At the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA) we share Aaron Davies' thoughts that museums using web 2.0 technology need clear understanding of what they wish to achieve (Museums Journal April 2008, p36).
But his article overlooked the extent to which this technology can benefit smaller, less well-resourced or, as in our case, only intermittently open museums.
The BPMA recently launched its own wiki (www.postalheritage.org.uk/wiki), a space on our website where users can create their own content and add to and edit other people's content.
It gives users the chance to work together to create a resource that reflects their own knowledge and experience of postal history. This allows us to widen access to audiences we would otherwise not reach.
One example is past and present Royal Mail employees. These, by virtue of our focus on postal heritage, are an obvious user group. Many would not, however, consider visiting our collections.
Yet our research suggests they are interested in talking about their personal histories and how current experiences differ from those of the GPO in the past. Our wiki aims to give them a forum to do just this - and in doing so to contribute to our contemporary collection, while gaining awareness of our work.
As a smaller museum and archive service we are limited by the amount of research and content that can be produced by a small curatorial team.
Wiki technology means we can also leverage knowledge and research provided by others - optimising the passion of our supporters, outside collectors and enthusiasts for the benefit of our collections and their interpretation.
By enabling access through our website generally and extending that involvement by facilitating user interaction by use of wiki technology we are going much further towards audience development than would otherwise currently be possible.
Quite apart from the opportunities available to larger national and university museums as mentioned in last month's article, for museums and galleries in situations such as ours, web 2.0 offers particular benefits.
Deborah Turton, head of access and development, British Postal Museum and Archive, London
Joining forces
I read with interest Scott Billings' article on the desire to merge archives with museum collections (Museums Journal March 2008, p30).
At the Greenwich Heritage Centre, we have had merged archive, local history and museum collections since 2003 when the Greenwich Borough Museum in Plumstead and the Greenwich Local History Library in Blackheath were brought together in a listed building on the historic Royal Arsenal site in Woolwich to become the integrated Greenwich Heritage Centre.
The centre offers a permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions, a search room to access the collections and a programme of events and activities. Although managed to the different professional standards required, both the museum and archive collections, as well as staff, are integrated in terms of the experience of the user.
This has brought benefits of greater access to the collections for the public by providing research facilities in one location and access through exhibitions, workshops, school group visits and other events. Museum objects and archives, for example, are used to teach school groups and are very popular with local schools.
The Heritage Centre is located next to Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum, which also has a library and adds further to the visitor experience when researching the history of the borough.
In our case the merger of the collections and the two services has resulted in a whole greater than the sum of its parts and has benefited staff who have developed new skills and different ways of using and interpreting the collections, and the public who now have access to a fantastic local history resource under one roof.
Chris Foord, visitor services officer, Greenwich Heritage Centre, London
Relevant ethnography
I was so impressed by Sharon Heal's well-balanced article on ethnographic collections (Museums Journal April 2008, p22) that I read it twice. She rightly emphasises that all ethnography curators need to make their collections relevant. Artists and art students have always seen ethnography collections as relevant and drawn inspiration form them.
Pablo Picasso was so inspired by African masks that he incorporated one of them in the face of one of the women in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which he painted in 1907. Henry Moore drew inspiration from pre-Columbian sculpture that he carved his Reclining Figure in 1929 in the manner of a Maya chacmool.
George Bankes, honorary research associate in anthropology, Manchester Museum
Open and shut debate
Do museums exist to serve the public, or are they more interested in the convenience of their staff? Last Easter Monday was a very cold day. Indoor activity seemed a good idea. I was in a well-known cathedral city. Both the museums in the town were shut, the art gallery was closed, the theatre was not open and the railway station would not accept left luggage.
Only the cathedral proved to be a shining example. Its services (in every meaning) triumphantly proclaimed the Easter message. There may be a case for closing small museums on ordinary Mondays, but surely they should be open on bank holidays.
Stephen Green, London
Questions of identity
Kiran Singh in his article (Museums Journal April 2008, p19) points to "imperial perspectives" conveyed by British museums, and feels that Vietnamese museums are also no "subtler in their ability to separate propaganda from reality", and that "so many British museums fail to present multiple perspectives of historical events"…
Visiting the Museo Carrer in Venice, I came across information about a brilliant Venetian general, Francesco Morosini. The name sounded familiar… Oh, this is the same Morosini who is damned in Athens for bombarding and nearly destroying the Parthenon!
I am of Russian origin, and always feel quite annoyed when visiting countless British military museums and having to face praise of British heroes who fought in the Crimean War in 1854-1856. In museums in the Crimea they are interpreted not as heroes, but as wicked aggressors.
Florence Nightingale hardly gets a mention over there; but in England one probably never comes across Dasha of Sebastopol, who did exactly the same, but on a much larger scale, although with much less publicity.
The Musée d'Artillerie, Paris, states that the Battle of Borodino was one of the great victories of Napoleon. In Moscow, you will be told that it was the Russians who won.
There are countless other examples, and it is clear that history is understood, told, passed on from generation to generation, and taught very differently in different countries. On the whole, historical museums around the globe create a wide, complex and challenging picture of national identities, their similarities and their differences.
This brings me to Sharon Heal's editorial Let's Bury This Idea Before It Takes Hold (Museums Journal April 2008, p4). A Museum of British History would be an ideal place to present the history of the country as a whole, not unconnected bits and pieces, or politically correct issues of the day, as now happens in the national curriculum.
What stories would it tell? The stories which were collected, analysed and presented by generations of great British historians. Celtic tribes and Saxon invasions, King Arthur and the Battle of Hastings, Magna Carta, Richard III and the Wars of the Roses, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution… I would love to see all this brought together in one place!
Who would it be for? According to the definition of a museum - for the general public, for the education and pleasure of the people. What objects would be in it? Original artefacts which contain, reveal and confirm historic facts. Who will decide what stories it would tell? Here I share Heal's concern.
Normally, it is scholars working in museums, curators and researchers, professionals in the museum field, who decide. Museums should not work "to government agendas", changing and reinterpreting the past according to hot issues of the day.
It is authentic artefacts, their origin, provenance, and their historic context which should determine the interpretation, and it is national identity which should emerge from the presentation of history of the country to the wider world.
Olga Baird, Victorian collections officer, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
At the British Postal Museum and Archive (BPMA) we share Aaron Davies' thoughts that museums using web 2.0 technology need clear understanding of what they wish to achieve (Museums Journal April 2008, p36).
But his article overlooked the extent to which this technology can benefit smaller, less well-resourced or, as in our case, only intermittently open museums.
The BPMA recently launched its own wiki (www.postalheritage.org.uk/wiki), a space on our website where users can create their own content and add to and edit other people's content.
It gives users the chance to work together to create a resource that reflects their own knowledge and experience of postal history. This allows us to widen access to audiences we would otherwise not reach.
One example is past and present Royal Mail employees. These, by virtue of our focus on postal heritage, are an obvious user group. Many would not, however, consider visiting our collections.
Yet our research suggests they are interested in talking about their personal histories and how current experiences differ from those of the GPO in the past. Our wiki aims to give them a forum to do just this - and in doing so to contribute to our contemporary collection, while gaining awareness of our work.
As a smaller museum and archive service we are limited by the amount of research and content that can be produced by a small curatorial team.
Wiki technology means we can also leverage knowledge and research provided by others - optimising the passion of our supporters, outside collectors and enthusiasts for the benefit of our collections and their interpretation.
By enabling access through our website generally and extending that involvement by facilitating user interaction by use of wiki technology we are going much further towards audience development than would otherwise currently be possible.
Quite apart from the opportunities available to larger national and university museums as mentioned in last month's article, for museums and galleries in situations such as ours, web 2.0 offers particular benefits.
Deborah Turton, head of access and development, British Postal Museum and Archive, London
Joining forces
I read with interest Scott Billings' article on the desire to merge archives with museum collections (Museums Journal March 2008, p30).
At the Greenwich Heritage Centre, we have had merged archive, local history and museum collections since 2003 when the Greenwich Borough Museum in Plumstead and the Greenwich Local History Library in Blackheath were brought together in a listed building on the historic Royal Arsenal site in Woolwich to become the integrated Greenwich Heritage Centre.
The centre offers a permanent exhibition, temporary exhibitions, a search room to access the collections and a programme of events and activities. Although managed to the different professional standards required, both the museum and archive collections, as well as staff, are integrated in terms of the experience of the user.
This has brought benefits of greater access to the collections for the public by providing research facilities in one location and access through exhibitions, workshops, school group visits and other events. Museum objects and archives, for example, are used to teach school groups and are very popular with local schools.
The Heritage Centre is located next to Firepower - the Royal Artillery Museum, which also has a library and adds further to the visitor experience when researching the history of the borough.
In our case the merger of the collections and the two services has resulted in a whole greater than the sum of its parts and has benefited staff who have developed new skills and different ways of using and interpreting the collections, and the public who now have access to a fantastic local history resource under one roof.
Chris Foord, visitor services officer, Greenwich Heritage Centre, London
Relevant ethnography
I was so impressed by Sharon Heal's well-balanced article on ethnographic collections (Museums Journal April 2008, p22) that I read it twice. She rightly emphasises that all ethnography curators need to make their collections relevant. Artists and art students have always seen ethnography collections as relevant and drawn inspiration form them.
Pablo Picasso was so inspired by African masks that he incorporated one of them in the face of one of the women in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which he painted in 1907. Henry Moore drew inspiration from pre-Columbian sculpture that he carved his Reclining Figure in 1929 in the manner of a Maya chacmool.
George Bankes, honorary research associate in anthropology, Manchester Museum
Open and shut debate
Do museums exist to serve the public, or are they more interested in the convenience of their staff? Last Easter Monday was a very cold day. Indoor activity seemed a good idea. I was in a well-known cathedral city. Both the museums in the town were shut, the art gallery was closed, the theatre was not open and the railway station would not accept left luggage.
Only the cathedral proved to be a shining example. Its services (in every meaning) triumphantly proclaimed the Easter message. There may be a case for closing small museums on ordinary Mondays, but surely they should be open on bank holidays.
Stephen Green, London
Questions of identity
Kiran Singh in his article (Museums Journal April 2008, p19) points to "imperial perspectives" conveyed by British museums, and feels that Vietnamese museums are also no "subtler in their ability to separate propaganda from reality", and that "so many British museums fail to present multiple perspectives of historical events"…
Visiting the Museo Carrer in Venice, I came across information about a brilliant Venetian general, Francesco Morosini. The name sounded familiar… Oh, this is the same Morosini who is damned in Athens for bombarding and nearly destroying the Parthenon!
I am of Russian origin, and always feel quite annoyed when visiting countless British military museums and having to face praise of British heroes who fought in the Crimean War in 1854-1856. In museums in the Crimea they are interpreted not as heroes, but as wicked aggressors.
Florence Nightingale hardly gets a mention over there; but in England one probably never comes across Dasha of Sebastopol, who did exactly the same, but on a much larger scale, although with much less publicity.
The Musée d'Artillerie, Paris, states that the Battle of Borodino was one of the great victories of Napoleon. In Moscow, you will be told that it was the Russians who won.
There are countless other examples, and it is clear that history is understood, told, passed on from generation to generation, and taught very differently in different countries. On the whole, historical museums around the globe create a wide, complex and challenging picture of national identities, their similarities and their differences.
This brings me to Sharon Heal's editorial Let's Bury This Idea Before It Takes Hold (Museums Journal April 2008, p4). A Museum of British History would be an ideal place to present the history of the country as a whole, not unconnected bits and pieces, or politically correct issues of the day, as now happens in the national curriculum.
What stories would it tell? The stories which were collected, analysed and presented by generations of great British historians. Celtic tribes and Saxon invasions, King Arthur and the Battle of Hastings, Magna Carta, Richard III and the Wars of the Roses, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution… I would love to see all this brought together in one place!
Who would it be for? According to the definition of a museum - for the general public, for the education and pleasure of the people. What objects would be in it? Original artefacts which contain, reveal and confirm historic facts. Who will decide what stories it would tell? Here I share Heal's concern.
Normally, it is scholars working in museums, curators and researchers, professionals in the museum field, who decide. Museums should not work "to government agendas", changing and reinterpreting the past according to hot issues of the day.
It is authentic artefacts, their origin, provenance, and their historic context which should determine the interpretation, and it is national identity which should emerge from the presentation of history of the country to the wider world.
Olga Baird, Victorian collections officer, Wolverhampton Art Gallery
