Assigning Significance of Collections South West Museums Council Mapping

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Assigning Significance of Collections - South
West Museums Council Mapping

• David Hill
• Collections Development Director

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SW Collections held by

• Local Authorities
• Independent bodies
• Universities
• Local societies
• Charities
• Private
• Commercial

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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

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Reasons for using WMRMC methodology

• No point in reinventing the wheel
• Very little time to get this done
• Reassure our membership
• Common approach

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1999section 1- management data

• Governance
• Registration status
• Visitor numbers
• Levels of collection care based on range
  statements
• Access assessments - based on range indicators

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1999 Section 2 - Collections

• Collection headings based on MGCs 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The future

• Indication that new SRAs 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