Illustration of a man sitting in an attic room at a desk. The desk is piled high with books and he is reading one of them. A window is open behind him.

A week in the life

What does the Mapping Museums research assistant do all day? I sometimes wonder where all the time goes. Although the vast majority of the four thousand-odd museums listed in the database were added before I really began work on the project, I’ve added well over a hundred new museums and made corrections to the entries […]

Four red double decker buses in a row inside a garage

New publications

Mapping Museums articles are like buses. You wait patiently for ages, and then three come along at once. We’ve provided the abstracts here and any interested readers can click on the links below for a full text copy. Understanding and Managing Patchy Data in the UK Museum Sector Fiona Candlin and Alexandra Poulovassilis It is […]

2 years spelled out in children's blocks

Two Years On: An Update

The Mapping Museums project is coming to the end of its second year. To mark the half way point of the research, this blog provides a brief update on some of the work so far. Finalising the data Early this year, Dr Jamie Larkin, the researcher, completed the main phase of data collection. We are […]

Modelling Patchy Data

How do researchers manage when they have missing data? One of the initial aims of the Mapping Museums project was to establish an authoritative dataset of all the museums open between 1960 and 2020, and to record information on their location, governance, accreditation status, subject matter, opening and closing dates, and visitor numbers. Having this […]

Mapping Museums: Why bother?

Readers who have followed our blogs to date may have realised how much work, time, and money is involved in mapping museums across the UK. The team currently comprises of two professors, and two full time researchers, one in computer science and one collecting and analysing data. By the end of its four-year life span, […]