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MLAG MeetingFriday 6th December 2019Dana Research Centre, Science Museum11:00 – 13:00?AttendeesSarah Abbot (National Archives); Penny Allen (Royal Museums Greenwich); Jane Bramwell (Tate); Craig Brough (Royal Botanic Garden, Kew); Kristine Chapman (National Museum Wales); Martin Cherry (Museum of Freemasonry); Sean Clemenson (Lloyds Register Foundation); Tom Drysdale (Historic Royal Palaces); Martin Flynn (V&A); Jonathan Franklin (National Gallery); Andrea Gilbert (Wallace Collection); Mark Glancy (National Museums Scotland) – Secretary; Angela Grimshaw (British Museum); Ashley Kelleher (British Museum); Antony Loveland (British Museum) – Chair; Hellen Pethers (Natural History Museum); Hannah Pym (Army Flying Museum); Prabha Shah (Science Museum); Susan Snell (Museum of Freemasonry); Lluis Tembleque Teres (Museum of London); Caroline Warhurst (London Transport Museum); Nick Wyatt (Science Museum).Charlotte Berry (ARA Section on Archives and Museums)1. Welcome, introductions and apologiesApologies from:Emer Ni Chellaigh (National Museum of Ireland); Dorothy Fouracre (Bank of England)Helen Pye-Smith (Bank of England)Nina Hadaway (RAF Museum)Marjolijn Verbrugge (Army Flying Museum)Heather Johnson (National Museum Royal Navy)Kerry Watson (National Galleries of Scotland)Julie Robertshaw (Imperial War Museum)Adam Waterton (Royal Academy)Louise Ellis-Barrett (British Museum)Melanie Grant (Wellcome Collection)Francesca Hillier (British Museum)Antony thanked Nick for hosting this meeting and organising the tour of the gallery.2. Minutes of last meetingMinutes approved and will now replace the draft version on the MLAG blog.3. Actions from last meetingAntony to approach the Research Board at the BM for funding for the RDM Conference – see item 6Invite Charlotte Berry, chair of the ARA Section for Archives and Museums to December meeting – see item 9.4. ARA Section for Archives and Museums Charlotte Berry, chair of the Section for Archives and Museums gave an overview of the new section’s activities and plans for the future.?? Charlotte is currently the archivist at Magdalen College Oxford but was previously an archivist at Clarks.There was a call for interest in the section in early 2019 following the January 2019 issue of ARC Magazine on museum archives that MLAG members contributed to.? This was approved by the ARA and the official launch of the section will take place at the ARA 2020 Conference.The section acts a forum for archivists and a common thread was how to manage an object collection, as well as looking at defining collection types, e.g. should 3D items in a collection should be classed as objects (e.g. artworks) or not.? The first objective in setting up the new section was to establish training needs: if you are an archivist in a museum or responsible for objects within your archive, what do you need to know?The first workshop took place at Tate Britain in May 2019 - ‘The same, but different': Museum Collection Management for Archivists' – and the subsequent training needs survey suggested repeats of this workshop around the country, plugging a gap in skills.? They will be taking place in Bristol on 21.1.20, Newcastle and possibly at the National Museum of Ireland and Cambridge.? The workshops will be open to institutional or affiliate members of the ARA at a discounted rate and also to non-ARA members.The feedback from the training survey requested both formal training and audio-visual/online resources for remote training (webinars, online conferences).? Respondents wanted to know what other heritage professionals do and where they can get help.? Other requests included:Guided tours to places such as storerooms as part of a meetingHow to deal with items in mixed collectionsDisplaying archive itemsCollections management – can you use library or museum management systems for this?Dealing with photographs and digitisationCollections moveCataloguing of collectionsDifferences in terminologyDecolonisation and repatriationThe Section is keen to hold joint meetings and informal networking events with other groups such as MLAG and Historic Houses.There was a discussion following Charlotte’s presentation and suggestions for SAM included:Creating a portfolio of practical resourcesA buddy scheme of mentorship programmeHelp and guidance on the Archive Accreditation process, with a list of accredited archivesUse of social media/hashtagsHelp with getting into heritage (the best route to follow).The Museum Association’s Museum Hour on a Monday @museumhour was highlighted as a useful resource (there are similar schemes for libraries and geneaology).Livery Companies have done work on looking after paintings in archives.5. Social media update – Hellen Pethers@MLAGuk currently has 472 followers.My apologies I have not been retweeting very much recently from the MLAG account. But it was good to see those who took part in the Explore Your Archives Week, although the subjects/themes were advertised only a week before by the organising group, which was a little tricky for some.I will update the group at the beginning of next year when there are dates and themes for Museum Week.One issue MLAG members had was the lack of notice of the topics for Explore Your Archives Week and the sudden change of topics for Museum Week.Colour my collections were a popular social media activity at NHM and NMW, having images that could be coloured in, especially woodcuts:BHL York Academy of Medicine . British Library/Shared IRO repository updateBeta version of the shared repository was launched on 26th November – a bit later than originally planned – and is now known as IRO and not OAK - e-mail sent to MLAG list with link to repository HYPERLINK "" BL have contacted Google Scholar to ensure the repository is included and Google Analytics will be providing usage statistics/metrics. Timeline:Business case being made this month, draft contracts going out to partners by January 2020BL will be retendering for Hyku supplier March/April, but there won’t be any down time while this is done. Terms and conditions and workflows/procedures will be finalised by April 2020.Full service begins April 2020 – BL will be looking for more partnersCharging will start from July 2020 - price now just under ?10k to avoid tenders. 7. Research Data Management WorkshopThere are 42 registrations so far, with capacity for over 100 in the space.The BM Research Fund will fund the event.Although the BM slot is still to be confirmed, 5 speakers have now been confirmed. The programme is:MorningAfternoon10.30 Registration2.00 Torsten Reimer (British Library)10.50 Welcome2.40 Rupert Shepherd (National Gallery)11.00 Tao Chang 3.20 Refreshment break11.40 John Kaye (JISC)3.40 British Museum slot (details TBC)12.20 Neil Beagrie4.20 Q&A1.00 Lunch4.30 Finish?Antony is still to write the event brief for the BM.8. Date, venue and themes of future meetingsThere will be a short MLAG meeting (30-40 minutes) prior to the RDM event at the BM on 21st February. This will replace the meeting normally scheduled for mid-March.A host is required for the June meeting. A suggested topic was preparing and carrying out moves collection moves and planning storage spaces.9. Library and archive updates from membersArmy Flying Museum - Hannah Pym The Army Flying Museum closed in November 2018 for five months while we completed a ?2.59million refurbishment and redevelopment of the museum. One of the main components of the project was the expansion and modernisation of our archive. We had previously outgrown the archive space and as such were having problems with accessing a lot of our collection. We have now moved to the ground floor in our purpose-built archive. This involved shifting almost the entire archive into a storage space on the army camp as we still needed to access it to write and research our interpretation panels while the building works were going on. We operated on camp for two months and when the archive was completed at the beginning of December 2018, we then shifted it all into its new home. We now have a purpose-built archive with roller racking, space for framed items, and much more space for expansion then we had before. The archive is also now temperature controlled and has a separate home closed off to our also new reading room. There are now two staff based in the Archive reading room, myself and Marjolijn our archivist. But we now have much more space to accommodate researchers and volunteers with all new working spaces and as such we have also been able to expand our volunteer base as well. British Museum - Antony Loveland and Angela GrimshawAntony Loveland – Senior LibrarianWe continue to progress with the library management system migration and the digital repository projects. The library management system project has moved into the procurement phase and we are currently working to get as much content into the repository as possible although the latter has been complicated to some extent by the repository’s bulk uploader tool. A moves of the ex-Hamlyn and Japanese section libraries are now in train in order to facilitate major capital works in parts of the Museum estate. We have used this as an opportunity to appoint two project librarians on fixed-term contracts to work on those two collections. The Hamlyn project will consist primarily of an audit whereas the Japanese library will undergo more extensive weeding, recataloguing and reclassification to LC.Library material currently features in the Sir Stamford Raffles exhibition and is due to feature in the forthcoming Arctic exhibition.Angela Grimshaw - ArchivistOver the last six months, The British Museum Archive Service has been focusing on an application for Archive Service Accreditation. This is going well and we hope to have more news on this at the next meeting. The team has also been supporting a major capital project which has involved moving a large quantity of archive material from one area of the Museum to another to allow building works to take place. This project has presented us with the opportunity to focus on this material with a view to re-boxing and cataloguing and funds are in place for a temporary post to support this. On the digital front, the Museum is currently reviewing its archive catalogue software and the hope is to procure a system which will speak to our object collection database, connecting these resources for the first time. Historic Royal Palaces - Tom Drysdale Back in the summer we started working on an Archive Strategy to work out what HRP wants to do with its historic records. This consisted of three well-attended lectures on a range of topics, two 'open days' with a chance for colleagues to ask questions and see some of our materials, and a workshop led by an external consultant which resulted in a report that will be presented to senior management next year.'Victoria: Woman and Crown' at Kensington Palace closes on 5 January 2020.'The Lost Dress' - a small display featuring Elizabeth I's only surviving dress alongside the 'Rainbow' portrait from Hatfield House - is open at Hampton Court Palace until 23 February 2020.Displays at Kew Palace in 2020 will focus on George III and mental health, and will feature contributions from male Londoners with personal experience of mental health issues.? I will be undertaking a research project in the new year on the topic of 'cataloguing architectural drawings in the digital age' and would love to hear from anyone who has any experience or expertise in this area. Please email tom.drysdale@.uk.Lloyds Register Foundation Heritage Education Centre - Sean Clemenson Funding overview:In September 2018, the Heritage & Education Centre was successful in its investment appraisal; granting funding from 2018-2023 to widen the Centre’s resources, recruitment and technology. Digitisation:Ship Plan and Survey Report Collection:As of December 2019, the Heritage & Education Centre has released +167,000 documents from its Ship Plan and Survey Report Collection. This collection dates back to the 1830s and includes Survey Reports, correspondence, photographs and ship plans relating to ship’s Lloyd’s Register classed until the late 20th century. The entire collection, numbering 1.25 million documents will be made entirely free via the HEC website. Our upload also sees the release of documents for over 30 British and Irish ports, from the giants of industry in Aberdeen, Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Hull, Newcastle, Liverpool and London, to rural ports at Bideford, Cowes, Weymouth, Limerick, Llanelli, Jersey and Montrose, to name but a few. Covering dates from 1834 to the end of the Second World War, this new upload sees the emergence of unique records for over 40,000 ships.What has also emerged is a huge range of fascinating, unique and often amusing stories. Among the thousands of documents to be uploaded are records of the Glasgow built iron ship Sea King, later the Confederate State Ship Shenandoah, the last surrender of the US Civil War – six months after it had ended.One interesting story to emerge is the case of the City of Vienna, built in Glasgow in 1866. Her owners wished to sell the vessel for '$35,000 in gold coin' (over ?500,000 today) after she had been damaged just off San Francisco in heavy gales. One of her lifeboats had been washed away with its entire contents which are detailed in an itemised list by the captain and first mate to include the sad loss of 'three frying pans, two ladles and one coffee pot'. This upload also sees the appearance of records for Dublin's fleet of Guinness barges and a Bideford shipowner who had not been aware that his vessel was on fire.Robotic Book Scanner digitisation:In August 2019, HEC had a brand new piece of equipment installed, a Robotic Book Scanner. The scanner, manufactured by 4Digital in Switzerland can turn up to 1500 pages an hour and uses two 50.6 megapixel camera to capture each page. Currently our Digital Archivist Michael Launchbury is digitising historic editions of the Lloyd’s Register of Ships. Each edition will be bathed, colour corrected and OCR’d. These will then be made publicly available for free via the HEC website. Over the course of the next few years a number of other collections will be digitised using the scanner, including historic LR Rules & Regulations, internal publications and staff journals.Open House London & Heritage Open Days 2019:HEC welcomed over 1,800 people to its research centre across both OHL and HODs 2019. Activities included a Q&A with historical figures throughout Lloyd’s Register’s history, guided tours, archive show and tells and a demo of our new VR experience.Virtual Reality Experience:In September 2019, the Centre launched its first virtual reality experience. At present, this is installed and in use at 71 Fenchurch Street only. However, the experience will soon be made available for free via Viveport and Steam platforms and will focus on the role of a ship surveyor throughout history. Utilising a high end PC, HTC Vive Pro headset and controllers, the experience places a player on board three different ships (Dutch Galiot, Composite Ship and Container ship). The player is then tasked with identifying three randomised survey issues on board each ship. The quicker you identify these issues, the higher your score will be.Summer lectures:In July, Laura Boon – the Lloyd’s Register Foundation Public Curator for Contemporary Maritime led a lecture on the resurgence of wind power in supporting the modern shipping industry. The lecture and subsequent Q&A can be viewed here.Opening Access to HEC: Small Research Grant:Our most recent small research grant will be live until 20 January. To find out more about the grant, as well as info on how to apply click here.From Coffee to Seaweed:In June, a permanent exhibition held on our mezzanine was opened. Titled “From Coffee to Seaweed - Engineering a safer world since 1760” the exhibition explores the history of Lloyd's Register through unique stories and objects. It showcases the current work of the Lloyd's Register Foundation and the Lloyd's Register Group and how we continue to help make the world a safer place. In November, a virtual version of the exhibition was made available. You can view a filmed lecture about the curating process here.Building:Throughout 2020, HEC’s home at 71 Fenchurch Street’s Collcutt building will be undergoing a major refurbishment. The restack will see a bespoke archive, research room and exhibition areas being built. Post build, 71 Fenchurch Street will, for the first time, hold all historical collections under one roof. Make sure to sign up to our mailing list to find out more.Twitter - @LR_InfoCentreFacebook – @LRFHECInstagram – lrfheritageeducationcentreWebsite – hec..uk Address - 71 Fenchurch Street, London, EC3M 4BSLondon Transport Museum - Caroline WarhurstThe business case for a standalone library management system has been approved, with funding provided by the Friends of London Transport Museum. The system currently selected is Heritage Cirqa. It is hoped the online catalogue will be ready to go live on the Museum’s new website in September 2020. Museum of Freemasonry - Martin Cherry/Susan Snell Rebranding complete.? Records management work being carried out.William Perfect exhibition continues to 11.1.20.? Manuscript available on the Museum’s website Library and Archives Treasures exhibition planned for beginning of February.Front of house staff have been helping in the library.? A floor refurbishment means that the library will be closed in January for three weeks and the books in the main library have been temporarily relocated. Completing return application to renew our Museum Accreditation.Museum of London - Lluis Tembleque Teres Mostly business as usual at the Museum of London Library, with lots of stock moves, further disposal and editing of records. This autumn we took part in two events: a museum friends session on paper conservation and preservation, with examples taken from the library; and a tour for 15 librarians organised by CDP25.In October our new Collections Management trainee Anna started; she’s employed by New Museum School and we act as host institution. I manage her but she’s involved in several collections management related projects (documentation, audits, collections care and conservation).Lately I have been preparing the library catalogue for a forthcoming release online, probably after the Christmas break. We now have two different versions of the opac, one for staff with location information and one for the general public without. I have also created a mobile device interface. We have not yet decided how much of a launch we will do; the idea is to improve awareness of the collection without a dramatic increase of enquiries and visits. Therefore we may limit the spread of the news to sector mailing lists or similar. In 2020 I am preparing for some major projects:-create a position for a volunteer or student placement to help with the gradual recataloguing of the collection;-work on the duplication of records in the library catalogue, as part of the ongoing improvement of our legacy data;-start designing the new library service for the New Museum, including a proposal for a library assistant or graduate trainee position;-and assist and probably take an active role in the now overdue audit of the library as part of our museum-wide Collection Information Upgrade;-investigate any developments in the library’s sector towards the updating of sensitive or obsolete vocabulary used in Library of Congress Authorities. Concerns have been raised by members of staff about terminology in the areas of gender and sexuality and also Black culture and history. [Post-meeting update: some work is being done by platforms such as and SACO]Regarding the museum, our Clash display is showing very successful, with visitors coming from even outside the UK. In 2020 we will have two exhibitions: the biggest Bronze Age hoard ever found in London will be on display at Docklands (free) and at London Wall we will have an exhibition about executions. National Archives - Sarah Abbot One of our librarians left a couple of months ago and it is unlikely she will be replaced in the near future.?The National Archives is in the process of creating two new learning spaces, one of which is in an area formerly occupied by about 900 metres of library shelving. We were given about six weeks’ notice to plan and move library stock during the Summer to accommodate this new room. The move has disrupted the sequence of the books which makes it less clear for users to find their way around; we have also moved about two-thirds of our journal collection from open access into storage. ?In addition to the above, Cliff van Dort, Head of Library is currently negotiating the best way to accommodate further loss of space in the library. We’re hoping that this will only impact desk space rather than shelf space but nothing is certain yet.?Partly driven by the above pressure on space, we are currently evaluating our physical journal collection, particularly as we have now moved a lot of it into storage. We’ll be looking at which journals should be open access and which in store, whether we can withdraw any titles permanently and whether we can make a case to purchase online archives to replace the print volumes. This will help improve access to our users who are now more familiar with accessing the current issues online. It will also help save time for both users and library staff when we have to retrieve items from storage.?On a more positive note, the library team are doing a lot more to promote the library to onsite users by creating book displays to accompany exhibitions and events and participating in workshops aimed at postgraduates. We also had a very successful display of rare books at the recent London Heritage Volunteers Awards ceremony which was held at The National Archives on 30 October 2019. Our display comprised some of the books with unusual bindings, endpapers, and bookplates that had been found by the library volunteers.National Gallery - Jonathan Franklin Our one-year Library Graduate Trainee will be leaving at the end of this month, and we expect to advertise in the New Year for the next trainee. At the same time we are investigating the possibility of establishing an apprenticeship to work in the Research Centre on both Library and Archives projects, based on advice from a similar scheme run at the V&A.In November I spent two weeks at the Getty Library in Los Angeles, on Getty-funded research to look at a collection of late 18th and early 19th century auction catalogues previously belonging to William Seguier (1772-1843), who was the first Keeper of the National Gallery from 1824 to 1843.?We have been approached by a new member of staff in the Picture Library at the National Gallery Company about exploiting visually interesting images in old books in the Library for reproduction, use in design, etc. In fact, back in 1886 a book was published by a Victorian architect who compiled a series of colourful textile designs based on fabrics and carpets, etc, in National Gallery pictures: Fifteenth-century Italian ornament : chiefly taken from brocades and stuffs found in pictures in the National Gallery, London (London: Quaritch, 1886).National Museums Scotland - Mark Glancy Our new Director is Professor Christopher Breward – starting in April 2020 - you may have seen this in the MA Journal. Christopher is currently Director of Collection and Research at the National Galleries of Scotland. He has also been Principal of Edinburgh College of Art and Head of Research at the V&A. He was also a Trustee of National Museums Scotland.National Museum of Scotland will be hosting the European Dewey User Group Conference on 7-8 May 2020.Exhibitions:Parasites: battle for survival (6 Dec 2019 – 19 April 2020)Tyrannosaurs (23 Jan – 4 May 2020)National Museum Wales - Kristine Chapman The Main Library at National Museum Cardiff is still closed to the public. Most staff are not too impacted by the closure, as they are able to access the stores and consult material in their own offices. Work to repair the roof and replace the wiring is progressing slowly, and the contractors are now estimated to return the room to us at the end of March 2020. The job of returning all the library collections will then begin, and we hope to be ready to reopen sometime after Easter 2020.The task to reorganise the Library at St Fagans National Museum of History, to integrate the two parallel classification and shelving systems has been completed. A rota of volunteers assisted with this work, including students from Cardiff University’s Care of Collections course, so it was also an opportunity for them to get hands on experience of caring for library collections.In July 2019 St Fagans National Museum of History was selected as Art Fund Museum of the Year, a fantastic achievement of which we are all very proud.The Museum is working towards gaining Archive Accreditation, this is being co-ordinated by the Collections Services division.Current exhibitions at National Museum Cardiff include the Photography Season, which presents work by four of the most influential artists/photographers in the history of the medium: August Sander, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Martin Parr, and of course Dippy, the iconic Diplodocus dinosaur skeleton from the Natural History Museum is in the Main Hall until 26 January 2020!The Library is currently undergoing an exercise to rationalise stores, and looking into the possibility of renting space for long-term deep storage of less frequently used items.Natural History Museum - Hellen Pethers New exhibition - Images of Nature Art Gallery – PalaeoArtOur new exhibition 'Palaeoart -Reconstructing the past' is now open in the Images of Nature Gallery. This is a free exhibition and is open until 28 April 2020. It includes for the very first time on public display the largest piece of artwork in our collection by George Johann Scharf (1788–1860) – Giant ground sloth Megatherium americanum (Watercolour on paper, 1842) Launch of the new Library and Archives Digitised Collections webpagesWe launched at the end of September with an initial collection and have been adding items/collections since.We are increasing digital access to our collections by releasing digitised versions of items from the Library’s Special Collections.Digital versions of some of our unique artwork collections have been made available for the first time, the content of which belongs to the Public Domain. You can view our Digitised Collections, or simply explore our collection pages to discover the many treasures of the NHM Library and Archives. additions: Anna Atkins (1799-1871) Photographs of British Algae : cyanotype impressions3 volumes of Photographs of British Algae: cyanotype impressions by Anna Atkins (1799-1871). There are only thought to be 20 known extant copies. Sarah Stone (1760-1844) album of watercolour drawings of birds. Museum Archivist VacancyOur archivist Laura Brown left for pastures new in October. Her position has been advertised and interviews have taken place. We will update MLAG when we have a result.Discovery Layer – upgrade to Primo VE.At the beginning of November we upgraded our Exlibris Primo front end software. This allows us to tailor the user experience more by changing the layout and labels. Generally there should be little visual difference, but it has allowed us to work on improving the visibility of our special collections and to improve the search options across our collections. Our staff users now also have ‘single sign in’ which means if they are logged into the Museum intranet this information pulls across and when they later go to the Discovery Layer, they are recognised and it logs them in automatically.Royal Botanic Garden, Kew - Craig Brough Shared Repository Service has just gone live, partnership with BL, Tate, British Museum, Museum of London Archaeology, National Museums Scotland9 Art loans to Wallace Collection Forgotten masters: Indian painting for the East India Company (4 Dec – 19 April)Still trying to recruit a Records Manager. Project Digitiser post vacant since June.Project Paper Conservator started 30 September – 2 years – working on Art collectionIn process of setting up OpenAthens access for Kew’s e-resources.We held a successful Explore Your Archives event on 27 November.Royal Museums Greenwich- Penny Allen In October 2019 the Library & Archive held a Maritime Archives conference, specifically catering to shipbuilding records which include core business records, technical drawings, photographs to digital records and focussed on the challenge of how to appraise, catalogue and make these available to the public. The hope is to form the basis of a toolkit on how to manage records of shipbuilding. The programme included an opportunity to discuss the work of the UK Maritime Heritage Forum and it is hoped the session will also serve as a pilot for an annual event focussing on maritime archives as part of a new Maritime Heritage Subject Specialists Group linked to the UKMHF.?The Cutty Sark celebrated 150 year anniversary in 2019 - year-long programme of events and celebrations will be taking place at the Cutty Sark, starting from marking the anniversary of the signing of the contract on the 1st of February to commence the build to its launch on 22 November 1869 and to the ship’s first official voyage on 16 February 1870. On its first voyage, Cutty Sark carried ‘large amounts of wine, spirits and beer’, and came back from Shanghai loaded with 1.3 million pounds of tea.?For future dates in your calendar, The Royal Observatory, Greenwich will celebrate 350 years in 2025. Please watch this space for further announcements. New exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum: Tudors to Windsors: British Royal Portraits starts April 2020 and Woburn Treasures in The Queen’s House 13 February 2020 – 17 January 2021. For more information please see our Press Release Page – Year Ahead 2020. related: We recruited internally for a new library assistant to replace a staff member who left in September. She started in November and is assisting our Acquisitions Librarian with the modern book collection. As well, I wanted to share with you about a new post in the library, which has been in place for over a year. This post particularly helps us as one of our staff has requested part-time hours. The Added Competency role is one day per week, situated primarily at the issue desk and on retrieval duty. This is an internally interviewed post and the candidates are drawn particularly from our visitor assistants department. Detailed particulars about the post will be provided in a separate email (If you would like further information, please contact library@rmg.co.uk). Our ‘reception desk’ volunteers, those concerned with registering researchers, are also involved with many transcription projects, particularly creating abstracts for our working book collection, indexing personal, shipbuilder and ship names from the journal collection and recording box level records for the crew lists. ?To improve communication around the museum, our head of department, Stuart Bligh, is keen that one person from each department of Research & Curatorial attend our ‘Staff Forum’ meetings. These meetings are opportunities to learn about the issues that come to us from staff and volunteers and to try to address various problems. These may range from uniforms for the visitor assistants to dispute reconciliation or concerns about pensions and union communications. The representative from each department at the museum is usually selected for a 6 to 12 month term.?As well, I thought you might find it helpful to explain the structure of our staffing, which comprises: ?Head of Research & Curatorial, Library Manager, 2 Archivists, 4 Archive Assistants, 2 Librarians, 4 Library Assistants, 1 added competency position as well as approximately 20 volunteers.? Science Museum - Nick Wyatt ?We have seen a 66% increase in visitor numbers for those using the Dana Research Centre and Library over the same period last year! It ?participated in Open House weekend in September and welcomed 184 visitors (an increase of 35 over last year), with a mix of architects, local residents, historians and the general public. The Library team also participated in History Day at Senate House on 19 October, an event which hosts librarians from a wide range of historical libraries within London. The day was very successful, we had 186 visitors visiting our stall and asking question about our collections. They came from different backgrounds, some from publishing houses, others were students, librarians, or adult researchers.We participated in the first internal SMG Research Autumn School, organised by the Research & Public History Department, where we gave a talk on library and archive resources and advanced searching techniques for databases.We have worked out how to transform metadata in Excel spreadsheets and import it into the Koha library catalogue (using MarcEdit software), which will enable us to load collections lists created by staff and volunteers. The first data to be imported was for the library’s microfilm collection, but we have many more Excel lists created by staff or volunteers, that once quality checked and adapted for Marc21, will be added to the catalogue. We are also carrying out work in preparation to copy library records for rare books into Mimsy and formally accession them as Museum objects. In the past the Library had accessioned them separately from the Museum, but is makes sense from a collections management point of view to do this as Mimsy can do many things that the library catalogue cannot.The work at Blythe House to prepare the collections for their move to the new store at the Science Museum National Collections Centre at Wroughton, near Swindon is moving on apace. By the end of September (the last figures I have) 36,029 objects had been found to contain hazards, 108,598 objects had been photographed and 27,468 had been packed. The new building is husge, as long as the Science Museum from the front door to the back of the Wellcome Wing!Three museum exhibitions and galleries have opened - Art of Innovation (in conjunction with a BBC Radio series),?Science City and a suite of galleries for Medicine, and they all look splendid! All have rare books from the collection on display, with 23 volumes on display in Science City (21 books, and two volumes of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society)? ???? Tate - Jane Bramwell Tate Library launched the zine collection in August 2019, and there will be a Martin Parr photobook Show and Tell on the 7 February 2020. ?The Archive Gallery at Tate Britain has been renamed in perpetuity as the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Archive Gallery, and a new display on the artist opened in October 2019.? Tate Archive celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020 and a series of events and displays are being planned.? Our Gallery Records team have been busy preparing a business case for an ERMS solution at Tate.? We have also been working with the British Library and project partners on the shared research repository.V&A and National Art Library – Martin Flynn Work has commenced on replacing the library roof which is due to be completed in May 2020. Disruption has been less than anticipated and we hope to avoid any closures.We are trialling an adaptation of Excel to gain statistical information about our library visitors by linking the database created to our library management systemThanks to suggestions from MLAG colleagues we now have our new Illustration Awards software, AwardForce, up and running for our 2020 competition.The recent Dior exhibition was the V&A’s most successful in terms of visitor numbers. Our Food exhibition was less successful. Tim Walker and Cars have recently opened.The National Art Library now has a presence on the Getty Research Portal: Hannah Dunne-Howrie, our Reading and Study Rooms Manager, is keen on developing a working group for museum libraries that support apprenticeships. h.dunnehowrie@vam.ac.uk 020 79422375Wallace Collection - Andrea Gilbert DigitisationDomenico Gasperoni’s Artiglieria veneta, 1782, which was digitised in the summer, can now be found on the Internet Archive (). It’s a treatise on Venetian Cannons, by the Director of Artillery at the Arsenale in Venice. All the ordnance there was destroyed by Napoleon when he captured Venice, (1797) but the Wallace Collection has a surviving 17th century cannon in the collection by one of the master-founders, Giovanni Mazzaroli.In the absence of a DAM system, Artiglieria veneta has been uploaded to the Internet Archive, and the Wallace Collection Visitors’ Book (1876-1897) has also been uploaded. Further projects include Wallace collection inventories.Another future digitisation project on a much larger scale is our collection of Phillips sale catalogues from 1796-1849. However, we must first establish ownership of this collection of c. 370 sales, as it was lent to us on permanent loan in the 1960s. Bonham’s have just agreed to confirm our ownership of this collection. Conservation and digitisation will of course require a significant fundraising campaign. The catalogues are the original auctioneers’ copies, interleaved with lot prices and buyers’ names.Library and Archive OutreachRecent Library in Focus evening events included the Herbert Bier Archive, part of the Insiders/Outsiders festival on 23rd September. It was presented by Herbert Bier’s daughter Marion Davies. Herbert Bier was a fine art dealer who emigrated to London prior to WW2.On 11th November we put on a display of our rare books, which had been restored due to a crowdfunding project. We were able to show images of these items before conservation, and their subsequent repair treatment was discussed.Monday afternoon events including highlights tours.On 7th October we had a display of the restored rare books for the people who contributed to the funds we raised for them.We also had an afternoon visit by the Friends of the National Libraries on 4th November. They have helped us to purchase some of our rare books, and also paid for the purchase and digitisation of the Gasperoni treatise.We also have around 8 lunchtime Highlights tours per annum on Monday afternoons, where we show visitors our treasures. Altogether this year we have had around 200 visitors this year. We are hoping to hold future Library in Focus events in the afternoons rather than the evenings, as they are easier to manage.Archive update from Morwenna Roche, Archivist The conservation work on Richard Wallace College of Arms and Baronetcy documents has been completed and the items were returned at the beginning of September, earlier than expected. The two documents have been flattened and cleaned, so are now much easier to display as well as looking so much better. We are hopefully going to get these photographed and digitise them and they will be added to the Internet Archive. The archive has also loaned a catalogue from the Artist Aid Russia Exhibition 1942 to Burgh House & Hampstead Museum for their ‘Art Aiding Politics Hampstead in the 1930s and 40s’ exhibition. This will be on display there until March 2020. There was a very successful evening event in September working with the Insiders and Outsiders festival, looking at the life of the art dealer Herbert Bier through his archive, there were over 30 people attending and as it was so popular we are going to repeat it in February 2020. Cataloguing on the Claude Blair papers has started; this is quite a complex and large collection of material so could take some time to organise. Hopefully this project should be finished in late 2020. Building projects and library closure Spring 2020The project to refurbish and upgrade staff offices on the 2nd floor of Hertford House will commence in April (?) 2020. The Library will have to be closed for a considerable period and the books kept in these offices (about two thirds of our bookstock) will have to go out to remote storage at Restore/Datacare whilst Curatorial and Education colleagues will be housed in the library. Once we have a definite date for this project we will put it up on our website.Staff newsSadly, our Research Librarian and Cataloguer Helen Jones will be leaving us in the New Year to take up a post at the German Historical Institute. She has been with us since 2011.10. AOBPenny Allen asked if there was any interest in MLAG members collaborating on having a joint stand at any future Family History Shows Alexandra Palace, London 17-18 April 2020 NEC, 26-27 June 2020 ExCeL London, possibly November 2020 . RMG, NAM and Museum of Freemasonry have previously taken part in these shows.The annual ARLIS conference will be held in Cambridge from the 22nd to 24th July 2020.The meeting was followed by a curator tour Science City: 1500 – 1800 in the Linbury Gallery of the Science Museum. Penny Allen wondered if those who attend our meetings would be interested in a ‘once-in-a-while’ social event? Perhaps after the upcoming Research Data Management Workshop in February, or a Christmas event or end of June event scheduled after our meetings? ................
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