Museum Libraries and Archives Group Meeting
May 2014
Meeting at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Friday 30 May 2014
10:00 – 13:00
Attendees:
Chris Mills (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) – Interim Chair
Martin Flynn (V&A) - Communications Officer
Mark Glancy (National Museum of Scotland) – Secretary, Scotland and N. Ireland Rep
Kristine Chapman (National Museum of Wales) - Wales Rep
Sarah Abbott (National Archives)
Jane Bramwell (Tate)
Melanie Grant (Wellcome)
Antony Hopkins (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Antony Loveland (British Museum)
Hellen Pethers (Natural History Museum)
Fergus Read (Imperial War Museum)
Prabha Shah (Science Museum)
Fiona Turnbull (Dr. Williams's Library)
Nick Wyatt (Science Museum)
Apologies:
Eleni Papavasileiou (SS Great Britain Trust) – South West Rep
Alan Crookham (National Gallery)
Catherine John (JISC Collections)
Helen Pye-Smith (National Archives)
Joseph Ripp (National Portrait Gallery)
Hannah Rausa (Natural History Museum)
Julie Robertshaw (Imperial War Museum)
Mel Smith (Natural History Museum)
1.
Welcome and introductions
2.
Minutes of last meeting (14.2.14)
3.
MLAG Chair
Chris Mills has been acting as the MLAG interim chair for the past year, but has been unable
to carry out much work due to restructuring at Kew. Antony Loveland from the British
Museum will take over as chair following this meeting.
Chris had looked back over the work MLAG carried out as outlined in the Business Plan in
2011 and the Strategy Paper to 2012, some of the objectives have been achieved and he felt
that there was merit in the way it was structured and worth using as a starting point for
moving forward on the things not yet achieved. Chris will discuss these with Anthony before
the next meeting.
4.
Future Meetings
The timing of meetings was discussed – it was agreed that it was difficult to find a suitable
day, but we could consider later starts for those travelling from outside London, this would
keep the option of having lunch with other members afterwards as networking was an
important part of the meetings.
4.1 British Museum – Friday 12.9.14
This would be held in the morning and it was planned to have a tour of the new
Conservation Centre afterwards.
4.2 Wellcome Trust – 12.12.14
The theme for this would be Open Access and Melanie would try to get the room booked for
a later morning slot.
4.3 2015 meeting venues and topics
Nick volunteered to hold a meeting at the new Research Centre in the Science Museum in
December 2015, possibly involving the other South Kensington Museums.
Mark has volunteered to host a meeting at the National Museum of Scotland in 2016 to
coincide with the opening of the new science and technology and art and design galleries.
5.
Potential use of social media
Martin, Penny and Hellen met to discuss this and there were a number of pointers for MLAG.
Julie Reynolds from NHM also had experience in blogs and explained steps that MLAG could
to keep the blog both useful and sustainable.
They felt it was important that MLAG needs to decide what we can get out of social media.
They outlined some options that can we try, possibly concentrating on one thing initially.
MLAG blog
At the moment blog posts are being flagged by e-mail alerts to the mailing lists. We should
ask people to register for alerts and they will get any new posts, but not the minutes or other
documents.
The MLAG blog is also a useful tool as an archive for documents such as meeting minutes,
strategies and business plans.
The MLAG blog also has links to other museum library blogs on the home page.
Every institution has a member who could add blog posts, although the contacts may now be
out of date as people move on. Some
Institutions have updated their contacts following the last meeting, but it was useful to remind
everyone.
Action: All members to check their links and contacts on the MLAG blog and notify
Martin or Mark of any changes.
LMLAG Mailing List
Chris Mills is currently owner of the mailing list, but this should be transferred to Martin and
Mark. As the mailing list is primarily for staff in museum libraries and archives he avoids
commercial users and can delete them if they are using the list to sell products or services.
The meeting thought it was useful to remind everyone how to register for the LMLAG Mailing
list.
Action: Martin and Mark to be added as administrators of the LMLAG Mailing List Chris
Action: Reminder to member institutions on how to register for LMLAG mailing list Martin and Mark
Twitter
Hellen has created a twitter site @MLAGuk, which members can use if you don’t have your
own account. It currently has 57 followers. Helen requested that MLAG libraries put a link on
their blog and also follow it.
Hellen outlined how they use twitter at the Natural History Museum to advertise museum
events such as Mollusc Wednesday, job vacancies and library blog posts (the most recent
highlighted the work of library volunteers for National Volunteers Week).
The tweeting and re-tweeting of blog posts are successful in promoting the library and and
MLAG could use twitter to do the same, with tweets demonstrating how we are a national
organisation.
6.
Presentations on Kew Library projects
6.1
Digitising the Directors’ Correspondence - Katherine Harrington
This is a collection of mainly letters, but also notes, photographs, drawings, plants primarily
from the 1840s-1920s, plus some prior to that.
The correspondence is in 218 bound volumes. 29,000 primary sources have been
completed.
Why digitise?:
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Improved access
Better search functionality
Enhance understanding
Continued access to fragile docs
Metadata visible to search engines
Link to collections
Valuable scientific data
Letters have been conserved and rehoused, they have also been catalogued in custom
database; imaged; read and summarised. Images and metadata are stored in in-house
system and available to view on the JSTOR global plants website. http://plants.jstor.org/
JSTOR global plants website can be searched by categories (e.g. letters, diaries).
Summaries and full text can be viewed.
Members of the team are is also involved in the Commodity Histories, a public forum for
research in this area www.commodityhistories.org
Trading Consequences
www.tradingconsequences.blogs.edina.ac.uk
Joseph Dalton Hooker Correspondence – Virginia Mills
6.2
www.kew.org/josephhooker
Hooker (1817 – 1911), Director of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew 1865-85
Workflow
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Volume identified as letters from Hooker in the archive (not incoming) – cleared for
copyright
Scanning in-house using book scanner – by 1member of staff
Catalogued in MS Access (using same format as NHM dbase for Wallace letters)
Images are e-mailed out to 12 volunteers for transcription (in MS Word).
Transcripts returned and all are checked by the Project Manager.
The call for volunteers for this project was massively over-subscribed. All volunteers were
fully trained and assessed. It is a flexible way of working, as the volunteer only requires a
PC with internet access and MS Word. The volunteers have a detailed transcription protocol
to follow and refer to. Wallace correspondence project has a copy
A closed group was set up on Facebook for volunteers – they can post questions (in a more
informal setting) and they often answer the questions themselves. They are invited to the
group by e-mail, so it is not linked to their social media life. If they have queries with
transcription, they don’t post full page images, but sections.
The correspondence went online in January 2014.
The letters are promoted on the website and in blog posts linked to enquiries. The content
can be enriched with drawings from notebooks.
The collection pages have searchable summaries and the record has a preview of the first
page of the correspondence – the remainder can be opened as a pdf (which is not
searchable yet).
It is hoped that both collections will be available via the Kew website with similar look and
feel.
An interim digital preservation policy is available.
There are blog posts about both projects at:
www.kew.org/discover/blogs/library-art-and-archives
7.
Conference 2015
The conference will be held at the Wellcome Library on Friday – space booked for 24.4.15.
Wellcome are providing the space which has been booked and we can use their booking
system for recording attendees. A breakout space is also available which could be also be
used as an exhibition space for suppliers, e.g. Ancestry, manufacturers of scanners – this
can help with the cost.
The conference fee could include teas and coffees, but lunch will not be included. Speakers
could be paid expenses, but only if they ask, however they could be given lunches in return
for appearing.
The conference is an opportunity for organisations to talk about their projects and how they
approached them (with a mixture of small, medium and large projects). These would take
the form of case studies concentrating on lessons learned, how they managed their project,
any changes made during the project, funding influences, techniques, outcomes (both
expected and unexpected), digital preservation and sustainability. There would be less
emphasis on the actual content of the digitisation project. If this list of topics to cover was
sent to each participant, it would help with comparisons, although some could focus on some
and not all of these elements.
The meeting felt that some of the less tangible things are the most important, but also
attracting funding. A workshop, with a Q&A on how to start a project, was also seen as a
useful option.
Potential projects should be based in, or involve, the library/archive rather than the museum,
but could cover paper and objects and demonstrate the library working together with
collections departments.
There were a number of suggestions from the members, including crowdsourcing with war
diaries (a project involving volunteers at the Imperial War Museum), but rather than decide at
the meeting, it was suggested that MLAG members contact the conference team with
possible projects/speakers.
Melanie and Jane have taken on the responsibility for organising the conference, but
welcomed any assistance from MLAG members. Fiona and Mark volunteered to help.
Action: All to contact Melanie and Jane with ideas for speakers, projects and
exhibitors for the conference.
8.
Library and archive updates
Science Museum
The library collections have now moved to Swindon Wroughton and the library will be open
on Friday by prior appointment.
There is a restructure taking place, with a Deputy Keeper for Archives and Printed
Collections to be appointed.
The new Research Centre in the Dana Centre will open in Oct 2015 and is now within the
Museum, rather than Imperial College. It will be a smaller library, but part of a larger
research facility, making it central to the museum’s research activity.
Selected archives and rare books will be moving to library. The customer journey is being
investigated. The Research Centre will be fully funded with new LMS (previously shared with
Imperial College) and a paid conservator based at Wroughton.
Architects have been appointed for Masterplan.
The current exhibition on James Lovelock contains library and archive material. The
Babbage archive will be going online very soon.
The Science Museum has launched the Science Museum Group Journal via its website.
This is peer-reviewed journal covering the history of science.
http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/
The National Archives
The library catalogue is now on COPAC. TNA have started using RDA for the cataloguing of
library material. There is a new collection development plan for library collections.
Wellcome Library
The new library entrance has just opened and we will soon start opening on Mondays again
after closing to accommodate building works, date still to be confirmed.
Work on The Reading Room has now begun. This will be a hybrid space: part Library, part
museum, part gallery. It is set to launch in 3-4 months’ time.
In conjunction with Digirati, the Wellcome Library has developed a player for digital objects
and has made it freely available for anyone to use. Further details here:
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/Media-office/Press-releases/2014/WTP055613.htm
Tate
Archives and Access Project - online publication of digitised objects from Tate Archive
scheduled for the end of October 2014. Soft launch of up to 14 Archive collections published
in October, with the rest scheduled for release by June 2015.
New Archive Gallery at Tate Britain - latest display curated by Tate Archivist Adrian Glew and
Hester Westley is opening w/c 9th June, titled 'Reception, Rupture and Return: The Model
and the Life Room'.
Building work at Tate Britain is completed, Tate Modern extension is still ongoing.
British Museum
EBSCO Discovery being implemented (funds found from cancellations of other items). Work
on authorities is ongoing and will probably be subject to a further tidying-up project. Working
with Sirsi to tidy up our metadata.
The BM has an RDA project in 2015.
Reading Room is closed as a gallery and consultation process will begin on what is to be
done with the space.
The upcoming exhibition on Indigenous Australia in 2015 will probably include library
material.
Courtauld
The Book Library is advertising for a job share Assistant Librarian (Serials and E-Resources)
and in the Gallery they will be opening a new prints and drawings gallery.
Natural History Museum
The library is migrating to a new LMS system in mid-July - Exlibris (Alma and Primo) currently testing the system and training staff.
The library will be closed to visitors from 14th to 21st July 2014.
The roof over the main Reading Room is being replaced this summer from the beginning of
August the Reading Room will relocate to a different space on the South Kensington site, this
will be fully advertised on our website nearer the time.
2 new members of staff have started in the archives – Katie Ormerod (Museum Archivist &
Records Manager – Maternity Cover) and Kate Tyte (Assistant Archivist & Records Manager)
– Kate is featured in a blog post (30.5.14).
National Volunteers Week is 10th-17th June and the blog will be showcasing the work the
volunteers do in the library and archives.
Dr Williams Library
Jonathan Morgan is the replacement archivist – 1 day per week.
WWI project on non-conformists and the churches they came from. The library has a slide
archive of churches/chapels and now looking for funding for cleaning and digitising the
collection.
The library has a Heritage hosted system and is cataloguing to Marc 4 format – records are
in OCLC and wish to add them to COPAC. The library also provides an ILL service.
National Museum of Wales
The library catalogue is on COPAC, listed as Amgueddfa Cymru.
The museum is in the second year of restructuring and it is due to finish by December 2014.
The library has moved and is now part of Collections Services, together with Conservation
and Photography.
The upcoming exhibition at the National Museum Cardiff is “I Spy...nature” beginning in July.
National Museums Scotland
The Royal Museum Masterplan 3 to create 10 new galleries to highlight our art and design
and science and technology collections starts in June 2014 with the closure of the Far East
gallery. The remaining art and design, Egyptology and science and technology galleries will
close by December 2014. The work is due to be completed by Summer 2016 to coincide
with the 150th anniversary of the opening of the museum.
Public access to the Research Library is off one of these galleries, so alternative
arrangements are in place, as the library will remain open during this work.
The library’s serials holdings are now included in the SUNCAT union catalogue and our
archive collections are now available on Archives Hub.
The current exhibition, Power of Ten: inventing logarithms, has a copy of John Napier’s
“Rabdologiae” with binding by James Scott (1617) from our special collections on display.
V&A
The V&A is creating a new entrance area on Exhibition Road with accompanying new
exhibition galleries by 2017. This has led to a temporary shortage of space for meetings and
some restricted access to facilities. As a result, the Prints and Drawings and RIBA Study
Rooms are only accessible by appointment with reduced opening hours
Imperial War Museum
IWM has been closed to the general public for a second 6 month period since January
2014. It will re-open Saturday 19 July 2014. The Research Room has continued to operate,
however, throughout the period of closure.
IWM has launched two crowd-sourcing projects working with external partners – Operation
War Diary (with TNA) and Lives of the First World War (with DC Thomson Family
History). The latter aims to create a permanent digital memorial to over 6 million who served
with British and Commonwealth forces and on the home front. IWM also provided digitised
content for a new e-resource just launched by ProQuest – First World War Trench Journals
and Unit Magazines.
The museum has appointed a Change Manager, to guide a restructure, in advance of FY
2015/16.
Royal Botanic Garden, Kew
WWI display in the Reading Room, but concentrating on 1916 as the archive has a donated
set of coloured slides of the Garden from this time.
As part of the restructuring the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives have been moved into
the Public Programmes, demonstrating their contribution to front of house activities. Chris
now reports directly to the Director and the seven departments have been reduced to four.
The Gardens are currently in a consultation period, with implementation of the new structure
by September.
A voluntary exit/retirement scheme is in place and 4 staff are leaving, 2 hopefully to be
replaced from external budgets.
2 BBC series are coming out soon (one on cookery, one on plants) which involve staff from
the library.
9.
AOB
No other business.
10.
Date of next meeting
Friday 12th September, 2014 at the British Museum