Democratising The Museum

Democratising the museum is a collection of articles about participation intended for academics and professionals. Democratic museum shares power with the visitors while negotiating the concept of professionalism. In this book the idea of participatory technologies is extended to modes of participation using online and offline technologies.

Museums today find themselves within a mediatised society, where everyday life is conducted in a data-full and technology-rich context. In fact, museums are themselves mediatised: they present a uniquely media-centred environment, in which communicative media is a constitutive property of their organisation and of the visitor experience. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication explores what it means to take mediated communication as a key concept for museum studies and as a sensitising lens for media-related museum practice on the ground. Including contributions from experts around the world, this original and innovative Handbook shares a nuanced and precise understanding of media, media concepts and media terminology, rehearsing new locations for writing on museum media and giving voice to new subject alignments. As a whole, the volume breaks new ground by reframing mediated museum communication as a resource for an inclusive understanding of current museum developments. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication will appeal to both students and scholars, as well as to practitioners involved in the visioning, design and delivery of mediated communication in the museum. It teaches us not just how to study museums, but how to go about being a museum in today’s world. The book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access at www.taylorfrancis.com. It has been made available under a a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license

This fourth edition of Museum Basics has been produced for use in the many museums worldwide that operate with few professional staff and limited resources. The fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect the many changes that have taken place in museums around the world over the last six years. Drawing from a wide range of practical experience, the authors provide a basic guide to all aspects of museum work, from audience development and learning, through collections management and conservation, to museum management and forward planning. Museum Basics is organised on a modular basis, with over 100 units in eight sections. It can be used both as a reference work to assist day-to-day museum management, and as the key textbook for pre-service and in-service museum training programmes, where it can be supplemented by case studies, project work and group discussion. This edition includes over 100 diagrams to support the text, as well as a glossary, sources of information and support and a select bibliography. Museum Basics is also supported by its own companion website, which provides a wide range of additional resources for readers. Museum Basics aims to help the museum practitioner keep up to date with new thinking about the function of museums and their relationships with the communities they serve. The training materials provided within the book are also suitable for pre-service and in-service students who wish to gain a full understanding of work in a museum.

Fully updated to include the many changes that have occurred in the last decade, this second edition provides a basic guide to all aspects of museum work and staff experience from museum organization, through collections management and conservation, to audience development and education.

Exhibition environments are enticingly complex spaces: as facilitators of experience; as free-choice learning contexts; as theaters of drama; as encyclopedic warehouses of cultural and natural heritage; as two-, three- and four-dimensional storytellers; as sites for self-actualizing leisure activity. But how much do we really know about the moment-by-moment transactions that comprise the intricate experiences of visitors? To strengthen the disciplinary knowledge base supporting exhibition design, we must understand more about what ‘goes on’ as people engage with the multifaceted communication environments that are contemporary exhibition spaces. The in-depth, visitor-centered research underlying this book offers nuanced understandings of the interface between visitors and exhibition environments. Analysis of visitors’ meaning-making accounts shows that the visitor experience is contingent upon four processes: framing, resonating, channeling, and broadening. These processes are distinct, yet mutually influencing. Together they offer an evidence-based conceptual framework for understanding visitors in exhibition spaces. Museum educators, designers, interpreters, curators, researchers, and evaluators will find this framework of value in both daily practice and future planning. Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience provides museum professionals and academics with a fresh vocabulary for understanding what goes on as visitors wander around exhibitions.

This book constitutes the post-conference proceedings of the First International Conference on Emerging Technologies and the Digital Transformation of Museums and Heritage Sites, RISE IMET 2020, held in Nicosia, Cyprus, in June 2021*. The 23 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: digital curation and visitor engagement in museums and heritage sites; VR, AR, MR, mobile applications and gamification in museums and heritage sites; digital storytelling and embodied characters for the interpretation of cultural heritage; emerging technologies, difficult heritage and affective practices; participatory approaches, crowdsourcing and new technologies; digitization, documentation and digital representation of cultural heritage. * The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Digital Future of Museums: Conversations and Provocations argues that museums today can neither ignore the importance of digital technologies when engaging their communities, nor fail to address the broader social, economic and cultural changes that shape their digital offerings. Through moderated conversations with respected and inf luential museum practitioners, thinkers and experts in related fields, this book explores the role of digital technology in contemporary museum practice within Europe, the U.S., Australasia and Asia. It offers provocations and reflections about effective practice that will help prepare today’s museums for tomorrow, culminating in a set of competing possible visions for the future of the museum sector. The Digital Future of Museums is essential reading for museum studies students and those who teach or write about the museum sector. It will also be of interest to those who work in, for, and with museums, as well as practitioners working in galleries, archives and libraries.