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Revisiting Collections
The collections in public museums, galleries and archives across the UK are there for everyone. We invest in their preservation, we collect and manage specific and contextual information about them, so they can continue to inspire, inform, surprise and delight every member of our national community and visitors from every part of the world, now and for generations to come.
These collections reflect our shared heritage and interlinking histories. Every object and record they contain can be seen and understood from a multiplicity of perspectives. A museum or archive service will never be the fount of all knowledge about what it holds, but it is vital that the bank of information we build now, and pass on for the future, recognises and records the layers of meaning and significance intrinsic to the items themselves, and to the language we use to describe them.
Revisiting Collections is an innovative methodology developed by the Museums, Libraries, Archives Council (MLA) and Collections Trust. It supports museums and archives to open up their collections for scrutiny by community groups and external experts and to reveal and capture histories hitherto hidden or ignored. A key strength of Revisiting Collections is that it provides a framework for embedding these new voices and their perspectives on objects and records directly within a museum or archive service's catalogues and finding aids: ensuring that they become part of the story about the collections that is recorded and made accessible to all.
The Revisiting Collections methodology comprises two toolkits: Revisiting Archive Collections and Revisiting Museum Collections and a range of support materials, including Running a Revisiting Collections Focus Group and an Excel spreadsheet to help with the capture of new information in a museum documentation system Revisiting Museum Collections data capture spreadsheet. These are all freely downloadable from this website. You may also like to browse through the downloadable pages listed below to see how the approach might work for you.
How can Revisiting Collections work for you?
- What is Revisiting Collections
- Why Revisiting Collection - benefits for your organisation
- Why Revisiting Collections - benefits for your users
- Getting started
- About the Revisiting Archive Collections toolkit
- Adding new info to archive catalogues and finding aids
- About the Revisiting Museum Collections toolkit
- Adding new info to museum collections knowledge management systems
- New media
- Evaluating the impact
- Revisiting Collections and the Cultural Olympiad
Download the toolkts and support materials:
- Revisiting Archive Collections toolkit
- Revisiting Museum Collections toolkit
- Running a Revisiting Collections Focus Group
- Revisiting Museum Collections data capture spreadsheet
Get involved
Revisiting Collections is a free methodology, published on behalf of the museums and archives domains. Many museum, archive and library professionals are already using the methodology and are keen to share their experience and expertise. We are building a case study library and can help you find contacts and trainers to support you as you get started.
If you would like to get involved in the development of Revisiting Collections, submit a case study, organise a training event or just be notified of changes to these pages, please enter your email address below and click 'Send'.Note: Collections Trust and our partner organisations observe a strict Code of Practice on Data Protection. The information you submit will be used for the sole purpose of adding you to the Revisiting Collections discussion list and will not be stored, distributed or sold to any 3rd party without your express prior consent.
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