Access To Museums Research Articles

Investigation of priority needs in terms of museum service accessibility for visually impaired visitors

This study investigates the priority needs of museum service accessibility for visually impaired visitors. For this purpose, conjoint analysis was utilized. Four conjoint attributes of museum services were selected: A — facilities for wayfinding; B — exhibitions and collections including objects for touching, hearing, smelling, etc.; C — information in braille, audio and large print; and D — assistance and interpretation by museum staff and volunteers. Participants were 30 visually impaired adults ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians. The results revealed that the priority needs in services for visually impaired visitors were accessibility to exhibitions and collections, and staff assistance. This finding was also supported by statements gathered in interviews. Based on this result, the potential for promoting museum accessibility for the visually impaired population in Japan is discussed.

An Augustan Dressel 2–4 Stamped Amphora from Chapel Street, Chichester

An Augustan Dressel 2-4 Stamped Amphora from Chapel Street, Chichester. avid Williams, Ian Scrivener-Lindley and Nicola Dowsett write: During the spring of 2007, Nicola Dowsett, a ceramics conservation student at West Dean College near Chichester, was asked by Chichester District Museum to undertake repairs and conservation on the top half of a broken Roman amphora as part of her graduate diploma studies. The amphora, which was represented by a collection of some 16-odd broken sherds, had been kept in the museum stores since the 1930s. The only specific reference to the finding of the amphora is in the Chichester Museum Accession Register, entry 487, which records a gift from W.L. White in 1939 of 'the mouth and shoulders (bearing potters marks) of a Roman amphora, found in Chapel Street'. There are no records of archaeological material being found in Chapel Street prior to the 1930s and it seems likely that the amphora was one of a number of pottery finds recovered from digging gas main trenches there between 1934 and 1935. The Chichester District Historic Environment Record contains a record of what would today be termed a watching-brief, carried out during trenching by 'the Gas Company' along West Street and Chapel Street in Chichester. The ground-works were watched over by Raymond Carlyon-Britton and William Llewellyn White. Although never fully written up, a brief account of the discoveries for 1934 was published in Sussex Notes and Queries. 94 The remains uncovered included walls of a Roman town-house with part of a tessellated floor and a '... considerable amount of pottery of several periods ...'. It was also noted that some of the finds were to be reserved for the city museum '... when it is fully established'. The gas main trenches were probably some of the first major disturbances to have taken place in Chichester's streets in the twentieth century; clearly Carlyon-Britton and White had acted upon this opportunity for archaeological discovery. Carlyon-Britton was a noted coin collector, the son of a founder of the British Numismatics Society. Both he and White were instrumental in the eventual establishment of a museum for Chichester in the former chancel of the Greyfriars church in Priory Park, their own collections forming a substantial part of the museum's displays. The 1930s proved to be an eventful decade for archaeology in Chichester and a number of important discoveries were made. Carlyon-Britton located the site of the amphitheatre on the south-east side of the city in 1934 and some limited trial-trenching was carried out there the following year by White's daughter Molly, later Lady Grahame Clark. Between 1934 and 1937 Carlyon-Britton and White also carried out the first planned excavations of the Roman cremation and inhumation cemetery at St Paneras outside the east gate of the city. The restored amphora, which has an almost complete rim, neck and attached bifid handles, belongs to the Dressel 2-4 classification (fig. 9).95 The Chichester example is distinctive as a hand-specimen, for the rather coarse fabric appears to contain much 'black sand' caused by the presence of frequent dark green crystals of augite.96 This visually distinctive fabric has been sourced to the region around the Bay of Naples and is especially associated with the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.97 It was used extensively, both for the local pottery and also for building materials such as brick and tile. The Dressel 2-4 amphora form (Koan type) was based on prototypes from the Aegean island of Cos and in Italy replaced the larger, thickerwalled Dressel 1 . It has a simple bead rim and a neck that tapers gently inwards towards a marked carination at the shoulder, with a body that tends to be cylindrical, leading to a short solid spike.98 The handles, which comprise two parallel clay shafts looted together into a characteristic bifid section, are flexed and join the amphora immediately below the rim and on the shoulder close to the junction with the neck. However, within this general type description there is some slight variation in shape depending on origin. This form is particularly common in the early Empire and was made in many different parts of the western and eastern Mediterranean, and to some extent in the northern Roman provinces as well, including Britain at Brockley Hill.99 In Italy, Campania was an important production area and several kiln sites are known in the north of the region, including Sinuessa/Mondragone,100 Falciano, Masseria Zannini, near Masseria Corbo, Masseria Pagliare, Santuario della Gran Celsa, Masseria Starza,

The Dubious Inheritance of Touch: Art History and Museum Access

Numerous museums and galleries now offer tactile opportunities as part of their access provision. This article asks why touch is deemed to be more accessible than vision as a way of learning about art and what repercussions that has for blind and visually impaired audiences. While touch has been discussed in many different contexts, touch also has a specifically art historical lineage where it is characterized in predominantly pejorative terms. This then raises serious questions concerning the use of touch within contemporary access provision: is touch used in access provision because it is considered to be more basic, easier than seeing? Does touch remain an adjunct to vision, a lesser, substitutive form of seeing? Alternatively, are art historical stereotypes so outdated that they are irrelevant for current museum practice? In which case does access provision show touch to be a qualitatively different route to knowledge? And, if this is not the case, how can we start to construct a model of touch that interlinks with vision without being subsumed by it, where touch concerns thought as well as feeling?

MOAC - A Report on Integrating Museum and Archive Access in the Online Archive of California

MOAC - A Report on Integrating Museum and Archive Access in the Online Archive of California

Late 17th-century stoneware waste from the Tower Harratz Pottery, Bristol

Large-scale redevelopment has taken place over the last seven years in the area now known as Temple Quay which lies between Temple Way and the Floating Harbour in Bristol (Fig. 1). Bristol and Region Archaeological Services have carried out excavations, evaluations and watching briefs on the various phases of this redevelopment. These have mainly been concerned with the Portwall, a defensive structure built during the mid 13th century, which ran from north to south through the development area. In 1994 the archaeological work included the total excavation of the medieval Tower Harratz (sometimes known as Tower Harris) and a Civil War gun battery or redoubt built infront of the tower.1 Jackson 1994. This note deals with the discovery of a group of late 17th-century stoneware waste during the archaeological work at Tower Harratz2 Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery accession number 45/1994. and its association with a pottery known from documents to have been established there in about 1695.

Theme section: Extending the reach of the school library

It is amazing to reflect that in little over a decade, we have seen the general introduction and adoption of CD-ROM and other digital multimedia, the Internet, online databases and information systems, Web-accessible library and museum collections, Web-based resources and access tools, online discussion forums, chat channels, and personally tailored Web portals-all available at the fingertips of the school students who are being educated in this rich information and communications technology (ICT) environment. Whether a school is well resourced with technology or not, the point remains that one of the most significant technological revolutions for education is underway since the progression from oral to print and book-based teaching.

The “Gallop Poll”: Using Evaluation to Develop Fossil Horses in Cyberspace, An Online Exhibition

The number, complexity, and popularity of World Wide Web sites has increased dramatically in recent years, providing a new opportunity for museum access. This case study describes the front-end and formative evaluations conducted during the development of the Florida Museum of Natural History's first virtual exhibition, Fossil Horses in Cyberspace , which during 2000 received −540,000 hits equating to −60,000 user sessions. As with physical exhibitions, evaluation is critical to enhancing the educational effectiveness and appeal of online exhibitions.

A Moving Experience: Thirteen Years and Two Million Objects Later

ABSTRACTThe Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution began preparing and moving its ethnographic and archeological collections, consisting of two million specimens, to an off‐site storage facility in 1983. The move was necessitated by continual museum accessions and diminishing available storage space, resulting in overcrowded conditions. Thirteen years later, the anthropology move is nearing completion. This article documents some of the circumstances that precipitated the collection move. It also delineates the procedures that evolved and some of the lessons learned. Experience showed that adequate training of staff was essential to the success of the project. Bar code technology was implemented to streamline tracking of objects and inventory control. With the completion of the anthropology move, the collections care is significantly improved on many levels, but challenges lie ahead because the new storage facility is nearing capacity.

Metadata elements for object description and representation: A case report from a digitized historical fashion collection project

This project's goal is to develop a catalog for a digitized collection of historical fashion objects held at the Kent State University Museum and to analyze and evaluate how well existing metadata formats can be applied to a fashion collection. The project considered the known and anticipated uses of the collection and the identification of the metadata elements that would be needed to support these uses. From a set of 90 museum accession records, 42 fashion objects were selected for cataloging. Three metadata treatments were created for these 42 items using (a) the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) in use with the United States MAchine-Readable Cataloging (USMARC) formats, (b) the Dublin Core set of elements designed for minimal level cataloging, and (c) the Visual Resources Association (VRA) Core Categories for Visual Resources created for developing local databases and cataloging records for visual resources collections. Comparison and analysis of the formats resulted in the adoption of a modified VRA metadata format to catalog the entire digitized historical fashion collection.

Availability of Extracurricular and Cultural Opportunities for Rural Middle Level Gifted Students1

The two studies presented in this paper examine the level of resources available to middle level gifted students in rural settings. Study one involved 235 middle level gifted students in eight states and compared the opportunities available to rural and suburban students, including cultural (e.g., access to museums, art exhibits, theatre), athletic, and other extracurricular activities. Differences between availability of opportunities for rural and suburban students were quite small. Study one suggested that assumptions that rural gifted students have fewer cultural opportunities and experiences than suburban students may lack validity. Study two, involving 210 middle schools in Maine, compares the level of extracurricular and academic resources available in schools with gifted programs to resources in schools without such programs. Results suggest that rural gifted students with access to gifted programs have greater access to activities and resources, especially athletic teams and late-model computers. Collectively, the results suggest that lack of opportunity is not an inherent rural trait, but that disparity exists within rural American schools. Possible causes of this disparity, including population and funding differences, should be the focal point of future research.

A Decorated Shield-Boss from the River Trent, near Ratcliffe-on-Soar

Part of an Iron Age shield has recently been identified amongst the collection of Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum, Warwickshire, adding another example to the corpus of Iron Age shields recently published in this journal. The newly recognized remains are in three parts and were recorded in the museum's accessions register as ‘3 pieces of horse armour’. These pieces were re-identified as the boss, spine and terminal discs of an Iron Age shield in the course of a project carried out between September 1992 and March 1994 to fully document and record on a computer database the whole of the museum's collection. Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum is managed by Warwick District Council and the three pieces have the accession numbers M1092.1928.1–3.

New primate fossils from the Middle Miocene of Maboko Island, Kenya

Understanding the biogeography and evolution of Miocene catarrhines relies on accurate specimen provenience. It has long been speculated that some catarrhine specimens among the early collections from Miocene sites in Kenya have incorrect provenience data. The provenience of one of these, the holotype of Equatorius africanus (NHM M16649), was previously revised based on x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. Here we use nondestructive portable x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy to test the provenience of additional catarrhine specimens that, based on morphology and/or incomplete provenience information, were identified as possibly having been collected at a different site from that recorded at museum accession. We test the hypotheses that two specimens purportedly from the Early Miocene site of Rusinga (KNM-RU 1681 and KNM-RU 1999) are instead from Maboko, three specimens purportedly from the Middle Miocene site of Fort Ternan (KNM-FT 8, KNM-FT 41, and KNM-FT 3318) are instead from Songhor, and one specimen accessioned as being from Songhor (KNM-SO 5352) is from that site. Elemental data reveal that two of the specimens (KNM-FT 3318 and KNM-RU 1681) are likely to have been collected at sites other than their museum-accessioned provenience, while two others (KNM-RU 1999, and KNM-FT 41) were confirmed to have correct provenience. Results for both KNM-FT 8 and KNM-SO 5352, while somewhat equivocal, are best interpreted as supporting their accessioned provenience. Our results have implications for the distribution of certain catarrhine species during the Miocene in Kenya. Confirmation of the provenience of the specimens also facilitates taxonomic attribution, and resulted in additions to the morphological characterizations of some species. The protocol presented here has potential for wider application to assessing questions of provenience for fossils from other locations and periods.

The natural history centre at the Liverpool Museum

During the last ten years or so museums world-wide have developed a range of exciting new display techniques. These vary in their objectives from providing entertainment, and thus being firmly rooted in the leisure and tourist industry, to projects concerned more specifically with a scholastic or educational role. The 1987 Museums Association Conference discussed many of the developments taking place in museums. In particular, Martyn Heighton and Robert Lumley reviewed, in separate papers, examples ranging from small local Heritage Centres to the massive developments in Paris. Whilst most have an educational role few are as specifically educational in their objectives as ‘Launchpad’ at the Science Museum and ‘Testbed’ at Liverpool. Often only a few ‘original’ museum specimens are used, and few have as an objective the specific function of making large parts of the stored collections available to the general public. However, some museums have realized the importance of making all their collections available to the public in a direct way. Notable developments were achieved at the University of British Columbia Museum, Vancouver, in 1976, and in a recent article Michael Ames (1985) reviewed three projects in Canada specifically designed to give the public better access to museums and their resources. In Great Britain there have been as yet few developments in this field. Richard Foster, in his paper to the Museums Association Conference in 1981, cited the work at Leeds City Museum, but went on to suggest that too many museums regard their reference collections as of interest only to the specialist. He questioned the validity of this assumption and hoped that within ten years, at least in his own museum, the large numbers of specimens available to the public only by an appointment system would be freely available for public inspection. Since then major developments have taken place at Liverpool. The Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, who assumed responsibility for the Liverpool Museum and six other institutions in 1986, quickly adopted a policy of improving public access to collections. The large objects in the Museum’s collection, together with an adjacent Testbed project, were opened to the public to form a popular new museum, whilst at the Liverpool Museum the first steps have been taken to display the entire ceramic collection with an adjacent study centre, a major part of which was opened to the public in April 1988. Both projects will be the subject of further papers, but perhaps the biggest problem concerns natural history. The vast majority of natural history collections were acquired solely for and as a consequence of research. They were never intended for display or, indeed, for being made available to a wide section of the public. In this country much material was

Brief report on retouched pieces among the Kiln Combe flint

The flint artifacts have not been the subject of detailed analysis and the type of deposit in which tney were found creates obvious problems of establisning to what extent we are dealing with a contemporary assemblage. Although the stratigraphic and spatial distribution of the material does suggest that much of it is contemporary with the Beaker pottery. Basic numerical information about all the flints has been given in mf 6, and the writer has examined the 260 retouched pieces with the specific objective of establisning what defined tool types are present and making some observations on their chronological range by reference to other sites. It is to be hoped that one day the assemblage will be studied in more detail and it is available for this purpose at Lewes museum (Accession No.1978:38).

Recent Bairdiidae (Ostracoda) From Ascension Island

A collection of intertidal algae on rocky shores of Ascension Island has yielded a large population of living ostracodes, most of which belong to four species of Bairdiidae. The shallow benthonic ostracodes of Ascension are almost completely unknown, and no bairdiids have previously been reported. The association appears to have both Mediterranean and Caribbean affinities. Our acquaintance with the ostracode faunas on both sides of the equatorial Atlantic is so slight that it seems appropriate to describe these few bairdiid species, even though the material available by no means represents the entire ostracode fauna of Ascension Island. The most abundant form is a new species of Neonesidea, N. manningi. More noteworthy is the occurrence of a Triebelina closely related to T. raripila (M?ller), a Mediterranean species first described from the Bay of Naples. The third form, Bairdoppilata? species 1, is closely related to a common Caribbean-Antillean species. Another species of Bairdoppilata? is represented by a single specimen. These samples were collected by R. B. Manning and Doug Rogers (Smithsonian Institution), 22 May 1971, and comprise U. S. National Museum Accession No. 294338. The locations are as follows:

A Short Harper's Song of the Late New Kingdom in the Yale University Art Gallery

Federn was the corpus of harper's songs, particularly the song of Neferhotep in the version represented in Papyrus Harris 500. x As a former student and admirer of Dr. Federn, it seems fitting for me to present this brief publication of a song of a few lines in one of the collections at Yale University. In 1937 the Yale University Art Gallery acquired a tomb relief of a man named Suenro (PI. I) as an anonymous gift. At the time of its acquisition the late Dr. Ludlow Bull served as honorary curator of the Egyptian Collection, and its acquisition must be credited to his interest. The relief is of limestone, measures 17 inches high by 26 inches wide, and bears the museum accession number 37.126. For permission to publish it and the accompanying photograph, I am indebted to the Director of the Yale Art Gallery, Dr. Andrew C. Ritchie. Three registers are represented in part. Of the almost entirely missing top register there are only traces, perhaps feet facing right and several jars on the left. The bottom register shows three heads of offering bearers. Of the first only the back of the head is preserved. The second holds a tray of offerings, and the third seems to be bringing an animal-headed canopic vessel. At the extreme right there may be a second canopic vessel with falcon ( ? ) head borne by a missing fourth bearer. The middle register is better preserved. On the left are two members of a funerary banquet seated on the ground with one knee up. The first, a man, holds a loaf or incense cone in his left hand. The second, a woman, has a flower and cone on her head; her left hand is crossed over to touch her right elbow. Above these seated guests or family members are vertical lines for seven short columns of text which were never

A collection of prehistoric artifacts from the Danish Isles (Carnegie Museum accession no. 19770)

A collection of prehistoric artifacts from the Danish Isles (Carnegie Museum accession no. 19770)

A Mathurā Inscription on a Varāha Image

N. P. Joshi, Curator of the Archaeological Museum at Mathurā, kindly supplied the author with a photograph of a partly damaged inscribed stone relief (Mathurā Museum Accession No. 65.15.4), showing in the centre the dominating figure of a powerful four-armed man— clad in a dhotī, the upper part of his body naked (the “Śrīvatsa” symbol on the chest), with two arms akimbo while the other two are lifted up each holding a round object, the legs planted wide apart, the abnormally broad neck decorated with a beautiful necklace. To the right of the head, which unfortunately is lost, a small female is flying in the air. To the proper left side of the man an adorant stands below a tree whereas to the proper right side two more figures are in front of another tree, one person standing in the background and the other, probably, kneeling (his upper body bent backwards), facing the proper right side of the relief (i.e. in the direction of the beginning of the inscription) where the stone is broken off.

Important Museum Accessions in 1953

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Far Eastern Art: Important Museum Accessions in 1951

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