Collections Trust Seminar

Colchester, March 2015

Wifi: COLCHESTERCASTLE

Hashtag: #ctskills

Welcome !

I’m Alex Dawson

Programmes Manager: Standards

Collections Trust

Aims for today

Our aims today are to:

• Introduce you to the work of the Collections Trust, highlight our tools, resources and services to support your work

• Share experience in collections management practice, and network

• Update from Isabel Wilson (ACE); Local Spotlight Case Study from Tom Hodgson (Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service) and a Museum Development Update from Amy Cotterill, MDO Essex

Key messages for today – effective Collections Management:

• Creates sustainable collections

• Starts and finishes with the audience, and is driven by mission/organisational purpose

• Is about organisational change

Resources

• In your delegate pack, you have:

• Information sheets about today’s resources

• Information about further Collections Trust events

• A Feedback & Evaluation Form

• Today’s slides can be downloaded from www.slideshare.net/collectionstrust

• All other resources available from www.collectionstrust.org.uk

Getting started

• Please do:

• Be an active participant

• Ask questions, comment and share your experience

• Respect information shared in confidence

• Take the opportunity to network!

What do you want to get out of today?

Talk to the person/people next to you

Write down 2-3 things that you want to get out of today

A brief introduction to the Collections Trust

Tim Keen, Marketing Manager

Collections Trust

The Collections Trust is...

...the professional association for people who work in

collections management

Established 1977

• To promote the education of the public by the development of museums and similar organisations by all appropriate methods;

• To develop, promote, maintain and improve standards of collections and information management in museums, art galleries, heritage organisations and other collections institutions;

• To provide services and resources which improve the standards and methods of collections management and use.

Not-for-profit

ACE funding

Self-generated revenues

Project funding

Our work

• Standards

• Workforce development

• Advocacy

Our programmes

We focus on issues that are relevant to collections management:

• Documentation

• Digital development

• Systems development (DAMS, CMS, Web, Mobile)

• Governance

• Security

• Insurance

• Pest Management

• Copyright & IPR

• Cultural property

• Participation and engagement

Special programmes

Recently we have developed resources, guidelines, factsheets and interactives around a series of special programmes:

• Security www.collectionstrust.org.uk/security

• Energy efficiency www.collectionstrust.org.uk/energy-efficiency

• Pests! www.collectionstrust.org.uk/pest-management

• Insurance www.collectionstrust.org.uk/insurance

• Participation www.collectionstrust.org.uk/participation

• Going Digital www.collectionstrust.org.uk/going-digital

• Copyright & licensing www.collectionstrust.org.uk/copyright-and-licensing

Copyright and licensing

We provide free resources to help museums with copyright issues and we’re addressing how recent legal reforms to copyright affect museums.

• Free resources at www.collectionstrust.org.uk/copyright-and-licensing

• Copyright: A Practical Guide by Naomi Korn- updated edition to be published later this month and available from www.collectionstrust.org.uk/shop

The Collections Trust website

• Re-launched in July 2014

• Hundreds of practical, free resources

• The latest news from the sector

• Blog posts

• Online shop (forms and registers, publications, eBooks)

• Comprehensive listing of sector events www.collectionstrust.org.uk/upcoming-events

• Register to receive a fortnightly e-newsletter

Practical Guides

• Simple practical guides to key areas of collections management:

• Titles:

o Collections Management: A Practical Guide

o Documentation: A Practical Guide

o Copyright: A Practical Guide (Updated)

o Governance & Collections: A Practical Guide

o Integrated Pest Management: A Practical Guide

• Available from www.collectionstrust.org.uk/shop

(RRP £24.99 and ebook £20.00)

Forms and registers

• Leading supplier of museum forms and registers

o Object Entry Forms

o Object Cards

o Exit Forms

o Simple Catalogue Cards

o Object Movement Tickets

o Transfer of Title Forms

o Accession Registers

• Available from www.collectionstrust.org.uk/shop

Keep in touch

• We offer several ways of keeping in touch with our work and with each other

o Collections Management LinkedIn community (8,600 members)

o Fortnightly email newsletter

o www.twitter.com/collectiontrust

o www.facebook.com/collectionstrust

o www.slideshare.net/collectionstrust

Update from the Arts Council England

Isabel Wilson, Senior Manager Quality & Standards,Arts Council England

SESSION ONE

Understanding audiences

Aims for this session

• To focus on audience, and how audience needs can contribute to the management and use of collections

• Introduce market segmentation and visitor centred design

• Start thinking about the relationship between your museum and its audiences

Here come the millennials...

“Not only is a friend just a

tweet away, but so is virtual

access to just about

anything under the sun.

This über-comfort level with

all things wired and

wireless gives millennials

an unprecedented level of

ease and capability with

ever-changing technology.”

Freedom of choice…”I choose”

Customisation…”I want to change this to suit

me”

Collaboration…”I want to work with

you on this”

Entertainment …”I want this to be

fun”

Innovation….”I want this to be new

and different”

Speed…”I want this now”

“Primarily by communicating with the

communities who use it. By capturing

more knowledge about our collection we

are keeping the collection alive, and by

working with communities to do this we

are making the collection sustainable.

There is a constant relationship between

the museum and the people who use

the collection.”

Daniel Martin, Curator

Leeds Industrial

Museum at

Armley Mills

The ‘user journey’...

...describes how people discover your museum, what they do while they’re there and how you maintain the

connection after they leave.

Pre-visit (discovery)

Visit (engagement)

Post-visit (relationship)

The key challenge for collections is to find ways of enhancing and extending the user journey so that people are:

• More likely to find your museum

• More likely to visit

• More likely to develop a lasting relationship with the museum afterwards

Pre-visit (discovery)

Visit (engagement)

Post-visit (relationship)

‘Snackable’ content – quick, shareable, interesting, quirky & fun, shared as widely as

possible with as many people as possible

Pre-visit (discovery)

Visit (engagement)

Post-visit (relationship)

‘Snackable’ content – quick, shareable, interesting, quirky & fun, shared as widely as

possible with as many people as possible

Location-specific (iBeacon!) content that is relevant – enabling people to

explore, discover, socialise and promote to their networks

Pre-visit (discovery)

Visit (engagement)

Post-visit (relationship)

‘Snackable’ content – quick, shareable, interesting, quirky & fun, shared as widely as

possible with as many people as possible

Location-specific (iBeacon!) content that is relevant – enabling people to

explore, discover, socialise and promote to their networks

Deep, relevant, personal and engaging stories, targeted

events and experiences, fresh ideas and offers

Discussion

• How does your museum capture knowledge about your visitors?

• How do you use this knowledge to inform your services planning?

• What role do the public play in managing & developing your collection?

SESSION TWO

Learning & change in your museum

We need to keep moving

The financial model for museums is changing, our role

is changing & peoples expectations of your museum (online and off) are changing

Aim for this session

• To focus on organisational culture change in the museum as a response to changing audience expectations and a changing world

Three models of change

• Internal bottom-up change – a growing dissatisfaction with the operation and/or culture of your museum eventually tips over into a will to change things and the energy to see changes through

• Internal top-down change – a new manager or Board of Trustees set a new direction and drive change through restructuring and re-defining your mission

• External – an external trigger, such as a loss of funding, change of focus, merger or other external factor forces the organisation to change

• Museums are not inherently conservative, but most museums are structured around the idea of managed and purposeful change.

Mission

• Mission matters more than people think!

• Two commons types of Mission Statement

– “We are going to change the world,” or

– “We will collect and preserve the history and heritage of [insert name of town] and interpret it for the benefit of the public to support education”

• It doesn’t really matter what the words are. It matters whether you believe them, whether they inspire you and whether you are proud to say it out loud

Brand

• Your museum’s ‘brand’ is the expression of who you are, what you care about, how your museum feels about itself and the relationship you want to have with your audience

• The brand of your museum is what people identify with, volunteer to be part of, have in their mind when planning a visit

• Every member of staff should be a champion for the brand – if its controlled through the marketing team, you’ll never achieve reach and scale

Curators may be sceptical but branding is vital for

museums, Robert Jones, Guardian 1 May 2014

“All this has led cultural organisations, in various ways,

to think more deeply about what they stand for, to

manage their identity more deliberately, and to

externalise it more clearly – both in the way they

communicate and in the experience they offer visitors.

It's a way for museums to win audiences and funding,

to sign up partners and to unify and energise their own

people.”

The ‘responsive’ museum...

Visitor experience

Collections

Learning

Retail

Online

Visitor Services

Facilities

Social

Mobile

The ‘traditional’ museum...

Museums sometimes operate in silos

Education Management Collections Retail IT

Being an Agent for Change

Video - “IT and Copyright as a driver for change”

Carolyn Royston, Head of Digital Media, Imperial War Museums

“You can see our collections but we don’t want you to enjoy them in any way”

Culture change

Culture change

Buy in from the top

Engage all staff

Plan and share

Started small

Create a ‘team’

mentality

Discussion

• What are the main changes impacting on your museum?

• What are the drivers for making changes (eg. survival, doing things better)?

• Is the need for change understood across the whole museum?

• What are the barriers that prevent your museum changing? What might help?

SESSION THREE

Introducing Investors in Collections Management

Aims for this session

• Define Collections Management

• Introduce the concepts of Strategic Collections Management and the Collections Management Framework

• Introduce Investors in Collections model

Collections Management

“Collections Management” is defined as:

“The strategies, policies, processes and procedures relating to a collection’s development, information, access and care”…for the benefit of its users.

Collections Trust/BSI Code of Practice for Collections Management (BSI PAS 197:2009)

Key elements

• Collections Management is:

• About the management of physical, digital and intellectual material

• At its best its integrated across all aspects of running a museum (front of house and behind the scenes)

• Never ‘finished’ – an ongoing process not a finite project – and an ever improving practice

• About achieving public trust and accountability through professional, transparent practice , and promoting audience engagement and participation

Key elements

• A Collections Management Framework is:

“A set of components that provide the foundations and organizational arrangements for designing, implementing, monitoring, reviewing and improving collections management processes throughout the organization to support the achievement of its mission.”

‘Strategic Collections Management’

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

CareAccessInformationDevelopment

Collections Management Policies and Plans

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

CareAccessInformationDevelopment

ProceduresSystems

Collections Management Policies and Plans

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

CareAccessInformationDevelopment

ProceduresSystems

Collections Management Policies and Plans

Evaluation & improvement

Rich experiences/services for users

Investors in Collections

Investors in Collections is:

- A model which describes museum wide collections management activity, which enables a museum to demonstrate improvement in those areas

Longer term, this model could be used to validate museums, and demonstrate that they show a commitment to delivering public value through their collections.

The aim is to award an Investors in Collections marque, after a museum has been through a process of review and assessment.

Museum development

MISSION

FORWARD PLAN

POLICIES

PLANNING

PROCEDURESSYSTEMS

COMPETENCIES

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

CONTINUOUS

IMPROVEMENT

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Detailed Model

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

PLAN

DO

REVIEW

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

DO

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

DO

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

DO

SKILLS & CPD

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

DO

SKILLS & CPD

Key points

• Understanding what Strategic Collections Management is, will enable you to organise your activity, deliver your mission, collect the data you need so that you advocate and plan for improvement

• Good collections management is the foundation of great museum experiences; it drives both accountability and creativity

• Having a well-managed, well understood framework promotes flexibility rather than constraining it

• Any kind of development – audience participation, income generation, brand development, outreach or digital – depends on having the basics of good collections practice in place

SESSION FOUR

Collections Management Standards

Aims for this session

• Introduce professional standards for Collections Management

• Introduce the Collections Management Standards Toolkit

‘Strategic Collections Management’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

CareAccessInformationDevelopment

ProceduresSystems

Collections Management Policies and Plans

Evaluation & improvement

Rich experiences/services for users

Why do we need standards?

• A language to describe the work we do• A synthesis of ‘distilled wisdom of a

community’ • Frameworks to work in• Advocacy tools • Quality indicators

• PAS 197: code of practice for cultural collections management

• SPECTRUM: the UK museum collections management standard

PAS 197 – what is it?

• Publicly Available Specification 197: Code of practice for cultural collections management

• Created by a sponsoring organisation (Collections Trust) and BSi ……the UK National Standards body

• A consensus based informal standard, developed by an industry, to pull together best practice guidance

PAS 197

• Defines Collections Management as the strategies, policies, procedures and processes that need to be in place and how they are managed within a museum, library, archive (to deliver benefit to the users of collections)

• Defines several key collections management principles which help to frame collections management activity to deliver mission

• The concept of the Collections Management Framework

SPECTRUM is an open, and freely available collections management standard ….the primary specification for collections management activity in museums.

• Launched in 1994 after an extensive collaborative development project

• Supported and developed by the worldwide SPECTRUM Community

SPECTRUM Facts & Figures

• 25,000 licensed users

• 40 countries

• 8 languages

• 17 SPECTRUM Partner systems

• Adoption as a national quality standard in 4 countries

• Interest from 5 new territories

• Published by Collections Trust with support from Arts Council England

• Current edition SPECTRUM 4.0 • 21 Procedures in workflows in SPECTRUM 4.0 • Units of Information in SPECTRUM 4.0 Appendix 1 – information capture

• SPECTRUM Advice guidance

• Essential procedures - the Primary Procedures - are mapped across to Accreditation Section 2: Collections

‘Primary’ procedures

The primary SPECTRUM procedures must be in place in a basic accountable museum documentation system, otherwise you are creating documentation backlogs

• Object entry

• Acquisition (includes labelling and marking)

• Location and movement control

• Cataloguing

• Object exit

• Loans in

• Loans out

• Retrospective documentation

Standards Toolkit

• Produced by Collections Trust with support from Arts Council England

• http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/standards-toolkit/introduction

• Structured around the four PAS 197 sections:

– Collections Development standards

– Collections Information standards

– Collections Access standards

– Collections Care & Conservation standards

Open Discussion

SESSION FIVE

Local Spotlight

Tom Hodgson, Colchester Museums Manager,

Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service

Museum Development Update

Amy Cotterill, Museum Development Officer, Essex

SESSION SIX

Collections Management Competency Framework

Aims for this session

• Introduce the Collections Management Competency Framework

• Think about skills development in your museum and your own CPD

Collections Management Competency Framework

Defining the skills and competencies of the

professional & volunteer collections management

workforce

What is a Competency Framework?

A Competency Framework brings together the skills, knowledge technical abilities and behaviours needed for a particular role, or to carry out a particular activity. It is a statement, or blueprint, which defines performance expectations, and supports the measurement of performance at an organisational and individual level.

How we created the Collections

Management Competency framework

• Funded by Arts Council England

• Open Culture Conference Sessions

• NMDC Collections Managers Group

• Much discussion with colleagues – CT; ACE; Museums

• Reference to Job Descriptions, person specifications

• Reference to other Frameworks in museums – NHM, EUColComp

• Reference to other Competency Frameworks from other worlds

• Tested it with the Collections Trust Trainees -www.collectionstrust.org.uk/traineeships

Competency Framework

Who might use the Framework?

• By national sector organisations to define roles and inform the maintenance development and management of competencies at a national level

• By governing bodies to identify the skill sets needed to deliver their mission and strategy, to set quality standards, and plan development

• By managers to deliver the strategic goals of the organisation, to ensure that the skills are in place to carry out a role or project, to fill skills gaps, and to measure the performance of staff, create JDs, person specs

• By employees, volunteers and individuals to understand the competencies needed to carry out a role effectively, demonstrate performance and plan to improve (CPD)

• By HE/FE and training providers to plan course structure and content so that the learning objectives of their courses meet the needs of the industry that their learners wish to enter

Key questions

• Do you have a Competency Framework in place in your museum?

• Would a Framework be useful?

• How would you develop and use a Competency Framework?

SESSION SEVEN

Collections Management and Museum Accreditation

Aims for this session

• Introduce the role of Collections & Collections Management in Museum Accreditation

• Describe the Collections Management requirements of Accreditation

Guiding principle

Collections are central to the function of a museum.

The management of the collections within an Accredited museum is consistent with the statement of purpose, policies and strategic vision for the organisation.

To do this effectively, and to allow for regular review and improvement, a coherent set of policy statements, plans and procedures should be put in place – a collections management framework.

This will address collections development, information, access, care and conservation.

Accreditation pulls SPECTRUM and PAS 197 together and asks you to have:• An organisational purpose• 2.1 Satisfactory arrangements for ownership of collections• Strategic Plans including plans for the collections (Forward Plan)• 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 Collections Management Policies - Collections

Development, Documentation, Care and Conservation • 2.7 Collections Management Procedures – 8 SPECTRUM Primary

Procedures – described in your Procedural Manual• 2.5, 2.6 Operational Plans – Documentation, Care and conservation• Expert assessment of your security arrangements

This is a Collections Management Framework

Collections Trust Accreditation support

We can

• Publish standards and guidelines

• Share case studies

• Share questions & answers with our networks

• Provide statements of support

We can’t

• Answer questions directly over the phone or by email

Online support

www.collectionstrust.org.uk/collections

SESSION EIGHT

Developing a ‘Digital Strategy’

Aims for this session

• Identify key trends in ‘going digital’ for museums and collections

- Creating content for audiences

- COPE

- Open publishing

• Introduce guidance and resources for museums wanting to make better use of technology for collections

- Digital Design Principles

- Digital Benchmarking Tool

• Explore Digital Strategies

Creating content for audiences:

what do people want? CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

CONTENT

METADATA

A BIT A LOT

FUN

RESEARCH

LEARNING

DATA MINING

COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT

AGGREGATION

OUTREACH

Digitize relatively few things & spend your money on quality and context

Digitize lots of things, use standards and don’t worry too much about promotion

Creating content for audiences:

what do people want?

‘Create Once, Publish Everywhere’

We need to learn to COPE…if collections and collections-based information are to play their part in enhancing and extending the visitor experience, they need to be discoverable and usable outside the museum and its website

COPE in practice, from this...

COLLECTIONSDOCUMENTATION

DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

INFORMATION / RECORDS

SYSTEMS OF RECORD

SYSTEMS OF ENGAGEMENT

USER CHANNELS & PLATFORMSBYOD

Museum

website

Gallery

interactives

Social

mediaAggregators

To this...

Collections Content &

systems

Mobile

Social

Website

OnsiteBYOD

Publications

Something new!

Open Publishing

• Creating content that is transparent to users – stories are created and appear instantly; content is copied and shared (IWM Case Study – shared WW2 memories)

• Editorial decisions may be made by users (Wikipedia)

• “not wrong for long”

• Implies very unrestrictive/open licences, copyright controls – very few barriers to publishing

Open Publishing – where are you?

• Attitudes and approaches to ‘open’ reuse of museum content exist along a sliding scale:

‘Radically’ open

Fully commercial

Thinking about it

Toe in the water

Mission driven

Going digital

• Positives and Negatives

Do we need a Digital Strategy?

…maybe

Tate Digital Strategy

• Implicitly linked to the Strategic Plan

• ‘Digital as a Dimension of Everything’

• Aligning the development of:

• Content

• IT infrastructure

• Social media

• Publishing & distribution

• Retail & income generation

Historic Royal Strategic Planning

• No separate ‘Digital Strategy’

• 4 principles:

• Guardianship

• Discovery

• Showmanship

• Independence

• Digital underpins and supports the achievement of these principles, rather than acting as a standalone priority

Digital Benchmarks:

a good place to start

• A simple diagnostic tool

• Mapping progress

• Celebrating success

• Planning development

• An integrated approach

Digital Benchmark “Range Statements”

StrategyLevel Description0 The organisation has no strategic plan or statement of mission or purpose 1 The organisation has a strategic plan or mission which does not reference engagement

through technology2 The organisation has a strategic plan, which includes projects and programmes, some of

which make use of technology. Digital is not fully integrated into the strategy, which is not regularly reviewed.

3 The organisation has a strategic plan, which includes projects and programmes, some of which make use of technology.

Digital is integrated into the strategy, which is regularly reviewed. 4 The organisation has a strategic plan/mission in place which references the use of digital

technologies to support core delivery, or it has a separate (but connected) digital strategy in place.

There is at least one digital champion within the senior management of the organisation. The strategic plan is regularly reviewed and updated.

5 The organisation has a strategic plan/mission in place which integrates the use of digital technologies to support core delivery.

The digital elements of the plan are owned and championed at a senior (Board & management) level and supported by appropriate budgets.

Digital technologies are embedded across all teams/departments of the organisation. Digital delivery and engagement through technology are embedded within the

organisation’s performance framework. The strategic plan is regularly reviewed and updated.

Mid-sized regional museum

0

1

2

3

4

5

STRATEGY

PEOPLE

SYSTEMS

DIGITISATION

CONTENT DELIVERY

ANALYTICS

ENGAGEMENT

REVENUE

Smaller museum

0

1

2

3

4

5

STRATEGY

PEOPLE

SYSTEMS

DIGITISATION

CONTENT DELIVERY

ANALYTICS

ENGAGEMENT

REVENUE

Showing progress

0

1

2

3

4

5

STRATEGY

PEOPLE

SYSTEMS

DIGITISATION

CONTENT DELIVERY

ANALYTICS

ENGAGEMENT

REVENUE

2012

2011

Additional resources

• Collections Trust Digital Benchmarks Toolhttp://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/digital/digital-benchmarks-for-the-culture-sector

• Going Digital resources, toolkits, simple guides and glossary:http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/going-digital

• Guidance on developing digital strategieshttp://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/digital-strategy

• Free Simple Guide to Digitisationhttp://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/digitisation

Open Discussion

Wrap up & conclusions

Aims for today

Our aims today are to:

• Introduce you to the work of the Collections Trust, highlight our tools, resources and services to support your work

• Share experience in collections management practice, and network

• Update from Isabel Wilson (ACE); Local Spotlight Case Study from Tom Hodgson (Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service) and a Museum Development Update from Amy Cotterill, MDO Essex

Key messages for today – effective Collections Management:

• Creates sustainable collections

• Starts and finishes with the audience, and is driven by mission/organisational purpose

• Is about organisational change

Keep in touch

• We offer several ways of keeping in touch with our work and with each other

– Collections Management LinkedIn community (8,200 members)

– Fortnightly email newsletter

– www.twitter.com/collectiontrust

– www.facebook.com/collectionstrust

– www.slideshare.net/collectionstrust

Thank you for your time and participation!