Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Mythbusting in Museums: Identifying Areas to Review
Similar to Mythbusting in Museums: Identifying Areas to Review (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Mythbusting in Museums: Identifying Areas to Review
- 1. Mythbusting in museums MA2015 conference, Sydney Thursday 21 May 2015 @laura_miles www.slideshare.com/lauramiles
- 3. Why is mythbusting important? • Identifying areas to review • Sourcing evidence • Making better decisions • Knowing strengths and weaknesses • Museums for (a variety of) audiences • Committing to change
- 5. Significance 2.0, Collections Council of Australia Archived at: www.environment.gov.au/heritage/publications/significance2-0/
- 8. Significance 2.0, Collections Council of Australia, archived at: http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/publications/significance2-0/
- 18. Deanna Vieth in the current issue of Museums Australia Magazine http://museumsaustralia.org.au/site/mam_current.php
- 19. twitter.com/VicCollections @YRRMuseum 498 followers @BgoArtGallery 2,332 followers @carnamah 1,348 followers @AbbeyMuseum 812 followers @sydlivmus 2,145 followers @communityHistSA 2,315 followers
- 25. Staffing capacity – community museums • Exhibition display/interpretation • Marketing • Curatorial • Public program development • Customer service
- 26. Staffing capacity – community museums • Exhibition display/interpretation 37% of paid, 52% volunteer-run had zero staff with these skills Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 27. Staffing capacity – community museums • Marketing 28% of paid and 60% of volunteer-run had zero staff with these skills Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 28. Staffing capacity – community museums • Curatorial 35% of paid and 45% of volunteer-run had zero staff with these skills Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 29. Staffing capacity – community museums • Public program development 36% of paid and 64% of volunteer-run had zero staff with these skills Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 30. Staffing capacity – community museums • Customer service 32% of paid and 25% of volunteer-run had zero staff with these skills... Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 31. Staffing capacity – community museums • Customer service …but 18% and 38% had more than 5 staff who did Review of Exhibition Capacity of Community Museums (2009) http://www.mavic.asn.au/exhibition_services
- 35. Three contemporary models • Contributory • Collaborative • Co-creative Source: www.miaridge.com
- 41. Kfar Kedem museum - www.k-k.co.il Source: http://aam-us.org/docs/center-for-the-future-of-museums/trendswatch2013.pdf
- 42. National Standards for Australian Museums & Galleries: www.mavic.asn.au/resources
Editor's Notes
- I pose the questions, you vote on the answers (Corriedale rams at a Sydney Show, 1962).
- Resources you need to make positive change - can be buy-in, financial resources or staff time.
- First up: significance…
- Looking at the primary criteria, do we think the object (the book) has historic, artistic, scientific or social significance?
- The answer is: possibly all of the above except artistic. Is it nationally significant? Yes. Locally to Victoria? Yes. Cyril Percy Callister was a chemist who became a food technologist and invented 'Vegemite‘ in 1922. He was hired by the Fred Walker Company (a Melbourne based manufacturer later known as Kraft) as a laboratory assistant to develop a yeast extract spread. By 1954 the 'Happy Little Vegemites' song demonstrated the popularity of the spread.
- How about this one?
- Looking at the primary criteria, do we think that this fireworks poster has historic, artistic, scientific or social significance?
- Again, possibly all of the above. The real answer here is that you as museum professionals understand and can define an object’s significance. Fireworks were manufactured in Sunshine, Victoria from the early 1890's by the PHOENIX FIREWORKS CO…and readily sold to the general public for celebrating Empire Day on May 24 and Guy Fawkes Day on November 5…[until they] were banned in Victoria in 1974. The factory no longer exists and ironically part of the site is now occupied by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Thanks again to the Collections Council for Significance 2.0 so we can all access this brilliant resource.
- Lighting is one of the trickiest things to get right in museums. (Tommy Dodgen, age 4, standing by the largest lamp in the world in Florida, 1947).
- A strong light in a short time will do more damage than a weaker light over a longer time – yes or no?
- No – reciprocity rule The same amount of damage will be produced. For example, 500 lux exposure for 10 hours is equivalent to the deterioration caused by 50 lux exposure for 100 hours. If light levels must be increased above recommended levels then display time should be reduced. If the recommended lighting is 50 lux and the actual light is 150 lux, the object should only be displayed for three months of the year. With thanks to Liz Marsden for the FördergemeinschaftGutesLicht, Good Lighting for Museums,Galleries and Exhibitions
- By volume (i.e. numbers of people) China is Australia’s fourth biggest international tourism market after NZ, the UK and the US. By economic value (dollars spent) China has overtaken the UK as Australia’s top inbound market – worth around $3.5 billion. China is becoming Victoria’s top source of tourists and tourism employs 4.5 percent of the Australian workforce (around 500,000 Australians).
- Brilliant economic report from Sovereign Hill Museums Association. Of their visitors, 62% from Victoria, 16% interstate and 22% international of which 18% from China and other Asia. SH estimates that an average each Chinese visitor spends $91 (day) and $101 (overnight) in Ballarat, where SH is located.
- Social media question – did more or less than 1,000 people get this message?
- Answer: just under 1,000 directly (with 948 followers) but it’s a trick question. This one was retweeted by MA (Vic) and we have followers on our account too, which adds an extra 1,137. Lynda Kelly’s use of ‘Throwback Thursday’ on her blog http://musdigi.wordpress.com/2014/04/24/misconceptions-held-by-museum-professionals-throwbackthursday/
- Lynda Kelly’s use of ‘Throwback Thursday’ on her blog. Visiting old research can be extremely useful, to see what we’ve learned and what has changed. Or not. This is well worth a look.
- Deannah Vieth presented this at MA2014 and in the current issue of MAM. M&GSQ and SLQ workshops on social media. “…clarification of terminology (e.g. tagging, Follow Friday)…and an understanding that social media is a suitable and inexpensive way to make collections available online.” “The Yugambeh Language Centre and Museum started a Twitter account at the workshop and one tweet was picked up by an ABC journalist, who re-tweeted it to his 10,000 followers.” “Consistent Internet and Wi-Fi access proved to be a challenge in most regional areas – but the impact of this was moderated with the provision of mobile hotspots for the workshops.”
- Here’s some community museums and organisations we follow with their current Twitter followings (at 17 May)
- Nearly 3,000 worldwide museums participated in a Twitter only conference: http://museumweek2015.org/en/participants/
- Twitter can be used to promote pretty much anything you can think of. So all of your traditional media, such as newsletters, magazines, books your members produce…can all be mentioned on Twitter. And shared.
- Onto a different topic – the importance of your front of house staff and volunteers. Does it matter if someone is there to greet you when you enter a museum yes/no? http://www.brynjonesassociates.com/news.html Research Findings BDRC's research of [UK] visitor attractions for the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (ALVA), presented to the Visitor Attractions Conference in October 2012, highlights amongst the five key trends for 2013: Staff are very often the single most influential driver of the overall visitor experience Staff can demonstrate to visitors that they 'belong' Staff can make the visitors privy to the stories and factoids that you cannot find on the internet Staff are instrumental in bringing 'the attraction to life‘ http://www.museumsassociation.org/museum-practice/front-of-house/15032012-volunteers-front-of-house
- Onto a different topic – the importance of your front of house staff and volunteers. Does it matter if someone is there to greet you when you enter a museum yes/no? BDRC's research of [UK] visitor attractions highlighted that: staff are very often the single most influential driver of the overall visitor experience, can demonstrate to visitors that they 'belong’, make the visitors privy to the stories you cannot find on the internet, and bring 'the attraction to life‘.
- How many staff and volunteers do we have in our museums? Using a sample of Victorian community museums, we looked into the capacity of those museums. This research is from 2009 and we’re hoping to repeat it.
- 22% and 21% had 1 person
- But 10% and 5% had more than 5
- But 10% and 8% had more than 5
- But 8% and 12% had more than 5
- But 18% and 38% had more than 5
- But 18% and 38% had more than 5
- What about learning in museums – and at museum conferences. Is it mostly like this? Should it be like this?
- Or more like this? The AAM blogged mischievously this month about three possible future formats for conferences. Mega “unconferences,” where organizers are ‘air traffic controllers’ lining up the space but enable attendees to self-organize… Conferences whose central and explicit purpose is networking via social events. Some don’t even register…or register but don’t attend sessions Distributed model, where the national association…create[s] high-quality core content that is beamed out to a satellite host site
- Museums are the domain of the ‘professional’ authority or the ‘amateur’? (Teacher at Cathedral High School in New Ulm, Minnesota, U.S. National Archives) and (feline mascot of the light cruiser HMAS Encounter, peering from the muzzle of a 6 inch gun, Australian War Memorial)
- Both. Mia Ridge suggests three models in which the authority and the public can work together. Contributory – where the public assists with a project designed by an organisation Collaborative – where both parties are active but the project is led by the organisation Co-creative – where all partners define the goals together Source: miaridge.com
- For example.
- Here you can log-on to the PROV’s soldier settlement archive and help transcribe digitised hard copy documents online. According to Mia Ridge, this type of crowdsourcing is ‘doubly productive’ because you get a product (the thing being done by the public) and the participants benefit from the process (satisfaction from contributing).
- So crowdsourcing by anyone and everyone has other real-life applications…
- …such as Victorian Collections, our digital cataloguing project, which will be presented by my colleagues on Sunday.
- Apart from contributing to museum collections, how do the public engage with museums before, during and after visiting, just as visitors? How many people tend to visit the museum website beforehand? More or less than 50%? How many surveyed had downloaded one of the museum apps? More or less than 25%? made an online search for the museum website? 63% read information online? 57% downloaded information? 31% engaged with social media? 26% downloaded apps ~12% After a visit, the stats are far lower. Walker in Tallon & Walker (2008) in Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience, cites that “only 15 to 20 percent of casual visitors typically visit the museum’s website to retrieve data they have tagged for later”
- Finally, here a quirky take on online at the museum. This is Kfar Kedem (kfar kuh-demm) the open-air museum in Nazareth. Visitors can experience an approximation of life 2,000 years ago, with hands-on cheese-making, olive picking, sheep-shearing, making pitta bread, making wine, sending messages via pigeon post and donkey trails. The odd thing here is that the donkeys are also mobile wi-fi hotspots, which means you can use your device as you ride. And the donkeys look thrilled to be so modern.
- There are take-away handouts for you including a link to the National Standards which underpin all best-practice advice we offer to the sector.
- And these slides will be available on Slideshare shortly.