Museum Libraries and Archives Group Meeting
Wellcome Trust
Friday 12 December 2014
11:00
Attendees:
Antony Loveland (British Museum) - Chair
Mark Glancy (National Museums Scotland) – Secretary
Martin Flynn (V&A) - Communications Officer
Chris Mills (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)
Nick Wyatt (Science Museum)
Hellen Pethers (Natural History Museum)
Melanie Grant (Wellcome Trust)
Rebecca Parrott (Wellcome Trust)
Nicola Cook (Wellcome Trust)
Fergus Read (Imperial War Museum)
Julie Robertshaw (Imperial War Museum)
Helen Pye-Smith (National Archives)
Penny Allen (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Sally Brooks (Museum of London)
Jane Bramwell (Tate)
Alan Crookham (National Gallery)
Apologies:
Kristine Chapman (National Museum Wales)
Eleni Papavasileiou (SS Great Britain Trust)
Maxine Millar (Tate Britain)
Mel Smith (Natural History Museum)
Joseph Ripp (National Portrait Gallery)
Antony Hopkins (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Adam Waterton (Royal Academy)
James Foster (Natural History Museum)
Nina Hadaway (RAF Museum)
The meeting started with two presentations:
Cecy Marden (UKPMC Funders Group Project Manager) on the Wellcome Trust’s open
access policy and the Wellcome Library Open Access Fund.
Valerie Brown (Events Officer) introduced the group to ‘The Reading Room’, Wellcome’s
innovative new public space, and explained how it was developed then gave the group a tour
of the space.
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1. Welcome, introductions and apologies
2. Minutes of last meeting
The minutes of the last meeting were accepted without change.
The only outstanding action is with Chris Mills to add Martin and Mark as administrators to
the LMLAG mailing list.
3. 2015 Conference update
The conference team has been extended to include Julie Robertshaw (IWM) who will assist
with selecting speakers; and Hellen Pethers (NHM) who will be the social media champion.
A call went out for speakers on the week commencing 10th November and so far there have
been 9 respondents for speakers and 2 for poster sessions. Participants will be selected on
Tuesday 13th January, 2015. Some other suggestions were provided including someone
from the Digital Preservation Coalition; and also to put the call out on the Heritage Libraries
Forum.
It is hoped to film/record the sessions on the day and show them online later. Wellcome
ticketing system can accommodate our requirements for both payment for the conference
and signing up for the 2 planned tours of the Digitisation Studio.
MLAG may be able to borrow 6-8 poster boards from Wellcome if they are not being used on
the day, otherwise they can be hired for £30 each plus delivery.
As lunch is not provided, to keep costs down, a generous lunch slot of 1.5 hours was
suggested, which would also give delegates time to look round the poster displays. A map of
local places to eat will be included in the programme.
4. Next meeting
Kristine Chapman had offered to host the next meeting at the National Museum Wales in
Cardiff and a room has been booked for Friday 20th March 2015. Kristine has asked a
colleague to do a short presentation about a project she’s been working on for the past 3
years funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. It focuses on digitising photos from our
collections, creating a searchable website so the public can access them, and culminates in
an exhibition which will still be running when you visit.
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/whatson/?event_id=7801
She also wondered whether members would like to visit the Cardiff Rare Books collection at
SCOLAR, based in Cardiff University - a 10 minute walk from the Museum. The collection
used to be owned by Cardiff Public Libraries and has now been catalogued by the University
and is available to students and to the general public.
The members thought that both the presentation and the visit would be useful. It was
suggested that the meeting time be pushed back, so it will be meeting at 11:00, for an 11:30
start.
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5. Date, venue and themes of future meetings
June/July 2015 - A conference de-brief meeting was suggested, with possible venues being
Royal Museum Greenwich, Natural History Museum or the British Museum.
December 2015 – Science Museum, with a theme of supporting research with a visit to the
new Research Centre.
6. Library and archive updates from members and regional reps
Imperial War Museum – Julie Robertshaw and Fergus Reid
As part of the response to the IWM needing to find salary savings of £2m a year from 2016,
the Library & Enquiry Service is threatened with closure. All library staff have been informed
that their jobs are at risk from April 2015, with a consultation period under way. The Museum
is considering closing the Library, perhaps passing all or part of it to another institution. The
Research Room would remain as an area to consult documents & sound only. Although £8m
of additional funding (over 4 years) has just been announced by the Treasury, from Libor
fines, this seems to be ring-fenced for the schools education services.
An online petition has been launched by Prospect, which currently has over 15,000
signatures and CILIP has written an open letter to Diane Lees, the Director-General of the
IWM .
Science Museum – Nick Wyatt
Value engineering work continues with the new Research Centre as a final version is being
developed. The library is currently in the process of procuring a new library management
system – and will be putting out an online survey on Survey Monkey to other libraries to
assist with the decision (they also used this method for a user survey).
The Museum has acquired objects and part of the library and archive belonging to Patrick
Moore, including his notebooks and a complete collection of his works (both in English and
translated into other languages).
The library is currently recruiting for a new archives manager.
The current exhibition at the Science Museum is “Drawn by light: the Royal Photographic
Society collection” (2.12.14 - 1.3.15).
Natural History Museum – Hellen Pethers
Roof works continue until Jan/Feb 2015 & the public service continues to work from a back
up reading room. Over the last couple of weeks the reading room has been fully booked, with
researchers mainly interested in our special collections.
The Library and Archives team have lost a number of staff (approx 5) to new positions
outside the NHM. We hope to recruit in early 2015.
The Images of Nature gallery features its third rotation of collection of natural history works
by women artists. For more info please see our latest blog.
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Our Twitter account @MLAGuk has reached is first milestone of 100 followers. Hellen is
currently looking at Storify as a method of pulling together tweets to create a timeline of
discussions on a webpage. Using the tag #MLAG15, Storify could bring together all the
tweets from next year’s MLAG conference. She created an example Storify for the recent
national archives event in November 'Explore a Your Archives'
https://storify.com/MLAG/archive-week
A new banner has been created for the blog. Our logo was designed by Hellen for our social
media accounts, but is only temporary until we can have something a little more meaningful.
If you have anyone creative in your team who can come up with something better, please get
in touch!
National Maritime Museum – Penny Allen
The Museum and Library will no longer be open on Thursday evenings from the end of
December (closing at 4:45 pm). Special events at the museum – which may involve the
library – may replace this.
Endeavour Project – top floor of the west wing (now offices) will be developed into a gallery
in 2015 and the library office will then be situated closer to the library.
The library is currently looking for an archive assistant (the position has been interviewed for
at the time of this writing) and the map librarian has left.
The library will be holding an Open Day in Summer 2015.
Wellcome Library – Melanie Grant
The library is currently installing Encore Duet.
National Archives – Helen Pye-Smith
The National Archives are putting their serials holdings on SUNCAT and will be the 100th
library to join the scheme.
Tate Britain – Jane Bramwell
Two new additions to the Tate website went live in October, as part of the ‘Archives and
Access’ project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The first is a set of digitised items from
artists’ collections held in Tate Archive, and the second is a new set of interactive tools and
functionality for public use, known as ‘Albums’. The official press launch will be on
16.12.14. Link: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/archive
British Museum – Antony Loveland
The library has installed new racking for its special collections.
Pre-1800 material is currently being moved out of the round Reading Room and transferred
to the new facility.
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A new security system is being installed in January 2015. As a result, the collection is being
tagged, starting with monographs – also taking the opportunity to include the de-duplication
of about 5000 items as part of this work.
The BM is part of the new Knowledge Quarter of 35 institutions in London which was
launched on 4.12.14.
The BM hosted three public debates on the Museum of the Future as part of its planning for
an estimated 8 million visitors a year in the future.
SS Great Britain Trust – Eleni Papavasileiou
The ss Great Britain Trust has received a deposit of an extensive IK Brunel collection. The
Clive Richards Brunel Collection consists of over 1500 documents and artefacts relating to
the Brunels, father and son, with many of the items not been seen by the public before. We
are currently processing the collection in preparation for the new Being Brunel experience to
open in early 2017.
Eleni recently attended and presented at a seminar of Maritime Archives organised by Stuart
Bligh of the NMM.
National Museums Scotland
The Head of Information Services post has been frozen until March 2015.
The library will be closed for most of January and February 2015 as staff will be involved in
decanting and recanting periodicals for the new mobile racking which is being installed.
The current exhibition is Game Masters which looks at the design of computer games and
features 100 playable games from Space Invaders to Minecraft.
7. AOB
The MLAG Business Plan and Strategy will be discussed at a future meeting.
8. Date and time of next meeting
Friday 20th March 2015 at National Museum Wales, Cardiff. Meeting at 11:00 for an 11:30
start.
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