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