Librarians who began practising in the last twenty years have had the phrases, ‘the death of the book,’ and ‘the end of libraries’ ringing in our ears for much of our careers. Yet, relegate a book to the store and you unleash a flood of emails to the University Librarian. If libraries are dying, a lot of people haven’t noticed. One of the finest characteristics of humans is our ability to share. In the academic library context this has meant, and is still defined by the Library’s contribution to the archiving and discovery of human activity. At the heart of all universities, the library in its many facets continues to balance tensions between print and digital collections, between the demands of teaching and research, between the humanities and sciences, and perhaps most importantly, between access to research information and support for its creation in academic practice.
Blogs
The Benevolent Museum
At a time of intense reflection for our cultural organisations, Stephen Welsh challenges museums and galleries to consider what ‘benevolence’ means in the twenty-first century.
Providing emotional support for archive volunteers: Methods used on the Manchester Together Archive project
This article presents some of the methods used to provide emotional support to volunteers working with the Manchester Together Archive (MTA) during a recent partnership project between Manchester Art Gallery, Archives+ and the University of Manchester, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The MTA is made up of thousands of tributes that were left in St Ann’s Square and other locations by members of the public following the attack at Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017. The material carries a heavy emotional load, so project staff aimed to design a volunteering programme that supported the emotional wellbeing of volunteers. The methods shared here will be of particular relevance to archivists managing volunteers working with trauma-related collections, which might include organisations engaged in contemporary collecting around COVID-19.
#ClosedButActive? An exhibition trying to find its voice during lockdown
This Insight looks at the temporary exhibition “We Capitalists. From Zero to Turbo” at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Germany, which was opened on 12 March 2020 and closed again two days later. The experience of lockdown was also sadly felt as a loss of voice, especially as the exhibition had the potential to serve as a meaningful commentary to aspects of the evolving COVID-19 crisis. This period of speechlessness clearly exemplified how exhibitions can or cannot be active, bringing the medium of the exhibition to its limits.
Community Climate Resilience through Folk Pageantry – AHRC Research Project
Lecturer in Heritage studies, Dr Jenna C. Ashton, leads a 24-month £417,445 AHRC research project ‘Community Climate Resilience through Folk Pageantry’.
What collecting spontaneous memorials can tell us about collecting COVID-19 – Part II
In this 2-part article, Kostas Arvanitis reflects on what collecting spontaneous memorials after traumatic events, such as terrorist attacks, can tell us about collecting (experiences of) COVID-19 and life under lockdown.
Who will deal with the underlying issues once the statues are out of sight?
Over the last weeks, activists in Europe and the US attacked statues of figures perceived to be representations of colonialism, imperialism, and racism. Such symbolic acts inspired similar protests across a wide variety of national communities – those involved citing a need for immediate justice and reparations for historical wrongdoings. But will removal and destruction of monuments result in necessary structural and systemic changes? This piece argues that reforms of social, punitive, and economic policy are necessary if we are to transform removal into something more than a Pyrrhic victory. The application of restorative justice that permeates all systems is required.
Equity, Empathy, and Ethics in Digital Heritage Practice and Research
“Equity, Empathy, and Ethics in Digital Heritage Practice and Research” is a joint project between the Institute for Cultural Practices and the School fo Social Sciences (University of Manchester), the iSchool, Faculty of Information (University of Toronto), The Manchester Museum, The Whitworth and the Museums and Heritage Services of the City of Toronto. It is funded by the Manchester-Toronto Research Fund.
Q: What, now, for public statues with racist, colonial, or imperial histories?
With Black Lives Matter protests and the toppling of the Colston statue still making headlines in the UK calls to do something about statues with racist or colonial histories grow ever more urgent. Options for dealing with these monuments are increasingly contested and […]
Digital responses from locked-down museums
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, museums increased their digital activities. This Insight summarises trajectories of this sudden digital transformation, reflects on its consequences, and presents a project aimed at mapping museums’ digital responses to the pandemic.
Exploring Blockchain in the Cultural Sector Online Conference – 16th October 2020
We are pleased to inform you that registration is now open for the ‘Exploring Blockchain in the Cultural Sector’ conference (16th October 2020).
Museum access post-Covid: Lessons for leaving lockdown
With the cultural sector now poised to re-open from July 4 under strict(ish) guidelines set by the UK government, now is a good time revisit an online chat we had with Professor Helen Rees Leahy earlier in the Covid-19 crisis.
Rethinking the role of museums in a time of crisis
As museums around the world have increasingly committed to making themselves digitally accessible to the public during lockdown, we have been flooded by new cultural content available online. While Italian museums have been mainly involved in a “broadcasting” approach, museums in other countries have strived to enable new and different engagement with audiences. What do these two approaches tell us about the roles museums want to fulfil and the relationship they want to create with their communities?
Iconoclasm, re-interpretation, counter-memorial, or what?
In the era of Black Lives Matter, what options are available for dealing with monuments, memorials and statuary with colonialist links.
Museums and community support during transitional periods
What can museums learn from other cultural institutions addressing conflict, memory and transitional justice to support communities during transitional periods? Art, culture and heritage play a fundamental role in restorative justice, due to its capacity to create healing bonds between victims, perpetrators, society and the State. Drawing on Colombia’s experience, Catalina Delgado Rojas highlights four actions that can inspire museums to provide comfort and support to communities transitioning to a post-pandemic world.
At Home: The Intimacy of Things and Spaces in Confinement
Corners, floors, walls, ceilings: a personal exploration of how intimacy in confinement shapes our ways of looking and taking notice of the material-human-natural cultures around us. And the potential for this experience to fuel a feminist ecological imagination.
There’s a place for us… Somewhere
Marginalised LGBTQ+ people find community and connection through shared spaces and hidden networks, navigating existing heteronormative cultures and norms. These places (physical and virtual) are where we find chosen family, a sense of belonging and home.
Seeing Objects from a Safe Distance
We often refer to the ‘texture’, the ‘materiality’ and the ‘tactility’ of artworks, even though we cannot touch them. Florrie Badley considers the additional barriers facing object-based researchers due to the outbreak of COVID-19, reflecting on how we were already responding to issues of distance, separation and forbidden touch in the gallery space before the pandemic.
Museums & Memes – 2
This week’ s expanding brain meme was inspired by Helen Rees Leahy’s post on Cultural Access and the ‘New Normal’. Even though Museums can be perceived as “accessible culture”, they have also been pointed out as a centre of exclusion at different levels. During […]
Exhibitions, Emotions, and the Books of the Pandemic
The last decade has seen a growing interest amongst museum professionals in developing a curatorial practice grounded in affect. In this Insight, Susana Sanchez-Gonzalez reflects on possible currents of affection that might be elicited by books during the pandemic, and how this may inform her research on the theory and practice of book exhibitions.