A netful of jewels

A NETFUL OF JEWELS: NEW MUSEUMS IN THE LEARNING AGE

A Report from the National Museum Directors' Conference 1999

TRAINING

The Grid will connect schools and other public institutions, like libraries and museums, to the Internet and therefore to each other and to the home. But these wires will only come to life with people trained to use them, and content to make them useful.
New Library: the People's Network: The Government's response: Department for Culture Media and Sport 1998

Museum staff, volunteers and a wider public will require new skills to create, manage and maintain participatory and truly interactive digital applications. Museum people will need to understand experiential learning and the techniques of information management and multimedia creation. They will also need to draw on inputs from a wide range of disciplines, in the arts, sciences and humanities.

Making a start on training

Skills are needed:
* To digitise, manipulate, and maintain museum collections information, images and other resources
* To develop new approaches to maximise the learning opportunities offered by digital museums
* To define and manage multimedia projects
* To enable customer care staff to help visitors to use information and communication technology
* To work with others to enable community projects and create cultural resources

Museums have two kinds of training responsibilities. The first is to train their own staff in the skills of using digital technologies and museum resources to enable public learning and participation, and to assist users. The second is training for the museums' public, to enable both adults and children to make creative use of cultural resources in their communities.

Training for volunteers must also not be overlooked. Volunteers play a productive role in museum services. Many small museums are crucially dependent on them. This is another opportunity offered by the new technologies: to engage the enthusiasm, skills and interests of volunteers to help create digital resources.

Making a start on training
Chipping Norton Museum is entirely volunteer-run. With training and equipment, the archivist, who has mobility problems, would be able to digitise the collection, conduct research, develop Internet resources and answer enquiries without leaving home.

In the National Portrait Gallery, front of house staff have received training so that they can use the Gallery's collections database to answer enquires from the public.