Museum Libraries and Archives Group Meeting
Science Museum
Friday 11 December 2015
11:00
Attendees:
Antony Loveland (British Museum) - Chair
Mark Glancy (National Museums Scotland) – Secretary
Sally Brooks (Museum of London)
Kristine Chapman (National Museum Wales)
Martin Flynn (V&A)
Jonathan Franklin (National Gallery)
Melanie Grant (Wellcome Trust)
Elizabeth James (National Art Library)
Maxine Miller (Tate)
Eleni Papavasileiou (SS Great Britain Trust)
Helen Pye-Smith (National Archives)
Hellen Pethers (Natural History Museum)
Julie Robertshaw (Imperial War Museum)
Adam Waterton (Royal Academy)
Nick Wyatt (Science Museum)
1. Welcome, introductions and apologies
Apologies:
Penny Allen (Royal Museums Greenwich)
Jane Bramwell (Tate)
Lisa Cardy (Natural History Museum)
Nina Hadaway (Royal Air Force Museum)
Antony Hopkins (Courtauld Institute of Art)
Fergus Read (Imperial War Museum)
Caroline Warhurst (London Transport Museum)
The chair thanked Nick Wyatt for hosting the meeting and giving us a tour of the new Library at the Dana Research Centre.
2. Minutes of last meeting
Minutes were approved and will now replace the draft version on the MLAG blog.
Actions: The results of the survey are to be distributed and Mel to forward follow-up e-mails to add to the survey feedback.
Action: Mark and Antony to work on the definition of a membership for the next meeting. See item 4
Future MLAG meetings will look at these objectives and activities in more detail to bring them together into a Strategic Plan or Mission Statement. See item 5
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3. Social media update
We now have 249 twitter followers and Hellen has updated the twitter accounts and museum blogs on the MLAG blog and put them into sublists.
Our e-mail account is MLAGUK@gmail.com
The MLAG channel on Youtube has the Conference presentations and has received 83 views – the presentation by Richard Everett has animations and is not loading properly. All of the conference participants have been e-mailed the link.
4. MLAG Membership
Currently we have 33 members listed on the blog home page, with around half of them regularly attend the open meetings, although they may attend the conference and events.
Action: Contact current members to check that they are aware of MLAG as contact names on the mailing list may be out of date. - Mark
Action: Cross-reference conference delegates against MLAG mailing list to see if there are any institutions we can approach about joining. - Melanie, Mark
Action: to put more information on the blog about MLAG and what it does. - Hellen, Mark
Particularly :

Share expertise

Share information (with examples, e.g. procurement of LMS, repositories, licensing)

Support to members (e.g. support for the campaign to stop IWM Library closure.

Stress it is a national organisation with members outwith London

JISC deals for MLAG memberships
Let everyone know that we have a new member.
Ask members to provide a library update even if they are not attending. If there are any upcoming exhibitions involving libraries, or new resources we can tweet and promote them.
5. MLAG Strategic Plan https://lmlag.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/mlag-strategy-2009.pdf
To be discussed at a future meeting, but one option from the ideas at the last meeting will definitely be developed:
- A small scale event (themes of procuring a new library management systems or library design were suggested).
6. Next meeting is to be held at the Museum of London and as Good Friday falls on the proposed date of Friday 25 th March 2016, it will now take place on Friday 11 th March 2016.
Action: Possible demonstration of EBSO Discovery Layer at next meeting - Antony
7. Date, venue and themes of future meetings
June: National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh
September: Natural History Museum
December: ss Great Britain, Bristol
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8. Library and archive updates from members and regional reps
Imperial War Museum – Julie Robertshaw
Photography permits for the Research Room a re being sold to visitors costing £5/£8 for a half/full day, a flat £10 day rate will be introduced in 2016. Tickets are sold at the general information desk rather than by the library staff, reducing finance related work. The substitution of photography for photocopying orders in the Research Room has also reduced the workloads for
Librarians and Collections Assistants and reduced the photocopying backlog. The user is responsible for copyright and use of a tripod and flash photography is prohibited. All cameras must be set to silent.
The Library catalogue is now in the Museum Objects area of Adlib, along with other collection records. The records still look like they belong to a Library and certain cataloguing and classification functions have been improved. In line with this location barcoding is being rolled out in the Library and we will play a full part in the Inventory audit scheduled for January 2016.
Natural History Museum - Hellen Pethers
The new exhibition in the Images of Nature Gallery focuses on the Bauer Brothers and is accompanied by a publication written by Paul Cooper, Special Collections Librarian.
The exhibition lasts for 18 months and the artwork on display will change every 4 months during this time.
For the first time the Museum has published a book ‘ Rare Treasures from the Library of the
Natural History Museum’ . This features 31 items from the collections and to promote its publication, during December each one will feature in a daily tweet from @NHM_Library .
Hannah Rausa (Serials Librarian) has started her maternity leave and Bobbie Winter-Burke has joined the team to cover this period of time. Lisa Cardy joined the senior management team in
September as Library Services Manager reporting to Jane Smith (Head of Library and
Archives). Across the team they currently have a number of staff vacancies and as a result have had to make adjustments to the service. It has been decided to become a library of last resort for external inter library loans and digitisation requests. One of the areas that this will allow the team to focus on is the institutional research repository. A social media group has been set up to support the work that has already been achieved over the last few years in this area and they are trialling providing material for the Museum’s Instagram account.
Hellen is representing the Library and Archives on a sub group tasked by the Museum Collections
Committee to assess external visitor access behind the scenes to collections (both specimen and paper) . As part of this she will be sending a short survey monkey around by email to MLAG members to get an idea of access to Museum Library and Archive collections in other organisations.
Science Museum - Nick Wyatt
The library in the Dana Research Centre opened in November 2015 and people are now coming in to use the collection. There have been a wider variety of departments using it since the move
(including Education, Exhibitions and Development), but fewer students from Imperial College.
Directors are also moving into the new building. There is a consistency of design across the library, leaflets, catalogue and membership cards (which have 4 designs).
The library has procured a new library management system, Koha, which is managed by PTFS.
Nick is happy to five information and advice on the procurement process and the criteria applied.
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Archives are on ADLIB which covers all of the Science Museums Group and will be going online next week.
£150m has been earmarked for Science Museum/British Museum and V&A to move out of Blyth
House which was storing collections.
At the Christies sale of books from the Royal Institution, the library purchased 2 rare books, one over 500 years old the other from 1801.
V&A - Martin Flynn
The V&A have to vacate Blyth House which is used for collection storage and is looking at alternative premises – this could be a 7 year process. A new LMS is one of 5 shortlisted IT projects so hoping to progress with this. The library has a dedicated wifi system for users who have to register and receive a login before they can access subscribed e-resources. The Indian
Festival continues into 2016.
Royal Academy - Adam Waterton, Librarian
A major HLF funded building project, which will link Burlington House with 6 Burlington Gardens, is underway and is due for completion in 2018, the 250 th Anniversary of the founding of the RA.
The Burlington Gardens building is being refurbished and a new lecture theatre and galleries for displaying works from the RAs permanent collection of paintings, sculpture, prints, books and archives will be built. Unfortunately, due to the building works, we have lost our onsite storage facilities and so have had to move all of our works of art and reserve book collections offsite. The offsite book store is on the outskirts of London and there is no delivery service to the RA and so retrieving items for readers in extremely time-consuming. In addition, 90% of the staff have been relocated to offices in Blackfriars for the duration of the building project. The library has instigated a twice daily delivery of books to staff at Blackfriars.
The library is currently hosting its first exhibition: white , curated by Edmund de Waal – with exhibits displayed on the library shelves.
Maurice Davis is the new Head of Collections and Library replacing Nick Savage on his retirement.
SS Great Britain Trust - Eleni Papavasileiou
The ss Great Britain Trust has received HLF funding for a new Brunel project which will include library and archival material.
We have a new Assistant Curator of Collections & Library to run the Library and support our collections activities as we work towards delivering Being Brunel.
The Trust’s Maritime Curator is currently undertaking a PhD researching 19 th century merchant navy crew. Brunel Institute volunteers and staff are currently compiling ss Great Britain passenger and crew lists, in digital format, with the aim of developing a genealogy online database to go live in 2016.
In 2015 the Brunel Institute received 4 new passenger diaries and over 600 books on steam ships whilst there were over 8,000 visitors including a new afternoon Library tour offer.
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Wellcome Trust - Melanie Grant
We’re half way through a project to transform the Wellcome Library into an innovative digital and physical destination: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/11/reflecting-on-our-digital-developments/
Developing Digital Cloud Library Services: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/06/moving-thewellcome-library-to-the-cloud/
100,000 digitised books in the UK Medical Heritage Library: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/09/100000-digitised-books-in-the-medical-heritage-library/
Just opened a new exhibition: http://wellcomecollection.org/secrettemple
Wellcome Trust is moving away from its old Internet Proxy Servers to a new, cloud based solution with the company Zscaler. This means the external IP address of Wellcome Trust will change.
The new IP addresses are actually shared with several other companies meaning that if those IP addresses are given to e-resource suppliers all the other companies using Zscaler will also get access. We are currently looking at ways to resolve this and if anyone has any experience of this that they would like to share it would be very welcome. When we find a solution I will share that with the group as other organisations may face the same problems as they move to cloud based systems.
There are two new appointments at Wellcome: Jenny Haynes, Head of Special Collections and
Research (in post) and Tom Scott, Head of Digital Engagement for Wellcome Collection/Library
(not yet in post).
Tate - Maxine Miller
The outgoing Tate Modern Director, Chris Dercon, donated approximately 3000 books and 4000 items of archival material to Tate Library and Archive on British and international art. The library is allowed to dispose of duplicates. Chris Dercon goes to Berlin's experimental Volksbuhne
Theatre.
The Archives and Access project is in its last year and a conference was held on Monday 23 rd
November 2015 entitled “Unboxing the Archive: how Tate is transforming access to our artistic heritage”. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/conference/unboxing-archive-how-tatetransforming-access-our-artistic-heritage It was very well attended.
Jane Bramwell’s remit will shortly be expanded to take on access to all Tate’s stored collections including Prints and Drawing. The library team is down one member of core staff but two library cataloguers have been recruited for the incoming David King Collection (funded by Tate
Members).
There will be a show and tell of library and archive material on 4 th February 2016 for the current
Artist and Empire exhibition with invited participation from Tate’s Public Programme team and
Tate Research. The show and tell will contextualize the exhibition coverage. It is a free event and open to the public but booking is necessary http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/talks-andlectures/library-and-archive-show-and-tell-artist-and-empire The Artist and Empire exhibition is on until 10 April 2016.
The National Archives - Helen Pye-Smith
Future exhibition on Shakespeare with Kings College at Somerset House will include records. The library is holding a rare books workshop in the week before National Libraries Day on 6.2.16. They also plan to do a webinar on TNA's Library in March.
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National Gallery - Jonathan Franklin
The new Director of the National Gallery, Gabriele Finaldi, started in August. He was previously at the Prado. The rare books cataloguing project finished in August and 600 records were completed. Records now include provenance information and LC classification; cataloguing practices have been standardized and barcodes are being added. The Research Centre is planning to charge a fee of £5 per day for photography permits, and charges for research support over 30 minutes are also being contemplated.
British Museum - Antony Loveland
Currently undertaking a review of the Museum’s 9 departmental libraries. The first phase, which looked at current management arrangements, is complete. Phase two will begin early in the new year. That will look more closely at access, storage and usage issues.
The library purchased its first rare book of 19 th C Polynesian bark samples – the only one held in the country.
The library management system contract ends in 2017 and there have been recent visits to the
Science Museum and University of the Arts to look at Koha.
New Director, Hartwig Fischer, starts in April 2016. Dr Fischer is currently the Director General of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
Museum of London - Sally Brooks
Business as usual while the Museum waits to hear about a possible move. The current exhibition is Crime, the upcoming e xhibition “Fire, fire” will include library material.
A new records manager has been appointed.
National Museum Wales - Kristine Chapman
The Welsh Assembly reduced the funds to the museum for 2016/17 by £1m (a 4.7% cut) and plan to withdraw and transfer our Specimen Acquisition Grant to the Welsh Government’s Museums,
Archives and Libraries Division (MALD). The library held an event for families in the main hall during Explore Your Archives week. Treasures: Adventures in Architecture exhibition begins in
January with rare books and general interest/family-orientated titles included. This will be the first exhibition with an admission charge that the museum has held in over a decade. The current exhibition is Reading the rocks: the remarkable maps of William Smith (until 28.2.16).
The library will be joining the WHELF consortium and is currently a library of last resort. The museum has a formal partnership link with Cardiff University which may entitle staff to greater access to the university’s library print and e-resource collection.
Royal Museums Greenwich – submitted by Penny Allen
The Archive and Library team are working full tilt on an offsite project. The new website for the museum has been launched and we are finding our feet, trying to accommodate all the questions from the public as to where the library pages are.
On the main page, click on the menu and then the National Maritime Museum link which will then display the Caird Library and Archive link. All the links should be working, and we are hoping for feedback to send back to the web page team.
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National Museums Scotland - Mark Glancy
The Library Services team joined the Collections Services Department in October (with
Collections Care, Conservation and Collections Documentation) led by Heather Caven previously at the V&A. We also have a new Director of Collections (Xerxes Mazda) who was previously at the Science Museum, BM and Royal Ontario Museum.
We have had a recent call for voluntary exit and our Electronic Services Development Manager will be leaving at the end of the month. Specific duties that were related to the library management system, repository and e-resources will be shared among the senior staff, although most are now carried out by IT or are covered by maintenance agreements with suppliers. As a result in the reduction of staff, the Info Zone in the National Museum of Scotland will be closing on
21 st December. More detailed enquiries about the collection will now be referred to the library.
Design work with costings is currently being carried out for the library in preparation for its reopening to the public when the new galleries reopen in Summer 2016, though the work may not take place until the Autumn. We received funding to reconfigure our existing mobile shelving so that it can accommodate larger special collections titles in a more stable environment.
The library recently acquired three original Audubon prints, including one uncoloured engraving of a Turkey hen and chicks from the Birds of America (which was in the Audubon family).
The library has applied to join COPAC but the waiting list is currently full so it will not be considered until 2016/7.
The museum has launched its first MOOC in conjunction with the University of Edinburgh based on our recent exhibition Photography: a Victorian Sensation. https://www.coursera.org/course/vicphoto
The current exhibitions are The Silversmith’s Art (to 4 th January 2016) features 150 masterpieces made by 66 acclaimed silversmiths between 2000 and 2015; and New to the National Collections
(to 28 th February 2016) – includes a rare piece of glass sculpture by Picasso entitled 'Capra'.
Celts is transferring from the British Museum and will open on 10th March, - the NMS exhibition will showcase more Scottish artworks and some items from the library collection.
Fossil Hunters: unearthing the mystery of life on land (26 Feb to 14 Aug 2016) looks at recent discoveries made in Scotland which provide evidence of how vertebrates moved from water to land 360
– 345 million years ago and help to solve the mysteries of a gap in our knowledge of evolution ( Romer’s gap).
9. AOB
Caroline Warhurst asked if we could change the name of the Jiscmail list to MLAG.
Action : Contact Jisc helpline to go through the implications and the options. - Mark
Tour of Dana Research Centre and Library
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