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

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

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

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