Assigning Significance of Collections - South West Museums Council Mapping

1. Assigning Significance of Collections - South West Museums Council Mapping David Hill Collections Development Director

2. SW Collections held by • Local Authorities • Independent bodies • Universities • Local societies • Charities • Private • Commercial

3. 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

4. Reasons for using WMRMC methodology • No point in reinventing the wheel • Very little time to get this done • Reassure our membership • Common approach

5. 1999section 1- management data • Governance • Registration status • Visitor numbers • Levels of collection care – based on range statements • Access assessments - based on range indicators

6. 1999 Section 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

7. 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

8. Benefitsof 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

9. 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”

10. 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

11. 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

12. 2001 • Online questionnaireand database • Trend Analysis - three years worth of data now available • Review of the criteria proposed for first year of SWMLAC business plan

13. 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