Collections Trust Seminar - Colchester, March 2015

Collections Trust Seminar
Colchester, March 2015
Wifi: COLCHESTERCASTLE
Hashtag: #ctskills

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-generatedrevenues
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

“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)
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)
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

• Define Collections Management
• Introduce the concepts of Strategic Collections Management and the
Collections Management Framework
• Introduce Investors in Collections model

“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’

Organisational Mission

Strategy/Forward Plan

CareAccessInformationDevelopment
Collections Management Policies and Plans

ProceduresSystems

ProceduresSystems
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
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
Standards

• Introduce professional standards for Collections Management
• Introduce the Collections Management Standards Toolkit

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
• 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

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
Competency Framework

• Introduce the Collections Management Competency Framework
• Think about skills development in your museum and your own CPD

Competency Framework
Defining the skills and
competencies of the
professional & volunteer
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

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

• 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’

• 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...
COLLECTIONS
DOCUMENTATION
DIGITAL ASSET
MANAGEMENT
INFORMATION /
RECORDS
SYSTEMS OF RECORD
SYSTEMS OF
ENGAGEMENT
USER CHANNELS &
PLATFORMSBYOD
Museum
website
Gallery
interactives
Social
media
Aggregators

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”
Strategy
Level Description
0  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 technology
2  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 Tool
http://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 strategies
http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/digital-strategy
• Free Simple Guide to Digitisation
http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/digitisation

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!

Collections Trust Seminar - Colchester, March 2015

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