Building the Database

The Mapping Museums project is an interdisciplinary one between Arts and Computer Science and as such a challenge in many ways as discussed in the earlier blog on “Interdisciplinarity“. The project is being run using an iterative and collaborative methodology, as the data collection often leads to new knowledge that needs to be modelled and […]

The Smallest Museum in the UK?

In 1983 the Museums and Galleries Commissions noted ‘many’ of new museums being established across the UK were ‘very small’ enterprises that had ‘been set up in an initial wave of enthusiasm and volunteer effort’. Surveying the sector in 1990, Victor Middleton thought that by far the majority were ‘very small’ and the historian Raphael […]

Interdisciplinarity

When Fiona Candlin and I first met up in 2015 to discuss the possibility of a research project that would create a database and visualisations relating to the UK’s independent museums sector, I was immediately intrigued. I knew from my previous experiences working on interdisciplinary projects to build specialist knowledge bases that this would be […]