Behind the scenes

Everyone who visits my office in Dunbar Town House envies the view. Here’s why…

Of course, they tend not to be visiting when the biting easterly winds are howling through the gaps around the  windows, and it’s really too cold to be sitting at a desk working. That’s when I migrate to the meeting room which is a bit (though not much) warmer. But of course there’s no network access there, so I have to brave the cold to read and write emails.

Still, as Norman Lamont said (in a completely different context), it’s a price well worth paying. Yes the view is stunning. But only when I remember to look up from the screen and enjoy it.

East Lothian Museums Service was the first local authority museums service in Scotland to achieve the new Accreditation standard. That may be by the technicality of having the museum with the lowest Registration Number (Prestongrange is 454), but when it comes to being first, who’s counting?

Since we are a small team, this award is a tribute to a great deal of hard work put in by all the staff, particularly in producing the Emergency Plan, and the Access and Collections Policies. These latter two are the result of a long held ambition of mine to reduce the policies covering the operation of the museums service to two - one covering the behind the scenes aspects, the other all those public-facing parts of our work. This goes somewhat beyond the requirements of the Accreditation standard, but I think it creates a simpler framework, and makes it clear to public, staff and the governing body that the museums service is about more than just Acquisition and Disposal, schools services and and exhibition programme which previously had been the sole content of our published policy documents.

So, anyway, well done everybody (which of course includes me). Go us!