Behind the scenes

Sarah has already posted about the object she chose for the BBC AHOW site, and I have chosen something altogether different (although no less attractive in its own way). I decided to put up an East Lothian Banknote, from 1821. Hopefully a version of this blog will be on the Museums Galleries Scotland blog too.

Why, you ask? (or at least I hope you do) The note is interesting, has a great story attached to it, and it is quite aesthetically pleasing too! Did you know that the first Scottish Banknote was issued in 1696? In those days these things were much larger than they are today, although no less ornate. This one is 12cm by 18cm – imagine a few of those crammed into your purse along with all that plastic, all those receipts, all that loose change (or is that just me)?! What interests me about this object is that whilst for us paper money is so commonplace as to be mundane it actually hasn’t been around that long in historical terms. Paper money started largely in response to the lack of precious metals to make coins out of, and forgery was a problem just as it is now. Banks used watermarking, embossing, detailed engraving, colour printing and the signature of Chief Cashiers to deter imitations.

The fact that banks operated on such a local level (although they weren’t terribly successful from what I can find out) is also very interesting, as is the information that the chief cashier, one William Borthwick, caused the bank to fail in 1822 when he absconded with the banks deposits. This caused a great scandal at the time and the tale resonates in the present day with the current global banking crisis. As more and more people begin to ‘think local’ it is interesting to re-examine stories like this one. For more about this object why not visit www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld or www.scran.ac.uk?

What would you like to see us (museums in general) put on to this site? Do you have things in your own collection or just kicking about the house that people might be interested in? The key thing for me is that whatever you choose needs a story. Just like a good film or book the narrative has to be engaging beyond the cover, which is the lure to get you to look in the first place! And remember what you might think won’t interest anyone outside your family will almost certainly resonate with someome, somewhere, sometime.

I could use a personal example here. I found a little pocket sized Bible the other day (I am ashamed to say in my sock drawer) that my Grandmother gave me, along with a coin purse and a pair of needlework scissors. They all belonged to her mother, who I am named for. My Great-Grandmother Kate carried the little Bible down the aisle with her when she married (and I can’t remember the year, oops) and carried it with her throughout her life. Ordinary? Yes. Boring? No. This little story (which I could elaborate on but not here) has religion, belief, tradition, habit, convention and a wedding. What more do we need!

 I’ve jumped blogs this week to be a ‘guest blogger’ – not a very attractive title, I know. This blog is being simultaneously posted on both this and Museums Galleries Scotland’s blog.

Recently, we were lucky enough to have one of our objects chosen to be part of the initial collection on the BBC’s History of World site. Our Bronze Age Beaker is amongst the earliest version of its kind in Britain still intact. You’ll probably have heard about the BBC’s project in one way or another, it’s basically about creating an online database of objects which represent…‘The History of the World’ (cue dramatic music).

Objects are now being uploaded from museums and individuals. Even Neil Oliver is getting involved by choosing his personal object (I know, it’s like he’s never off the TV). So I tried uploading another object to see how it would work.

I registered as a user on the website which was really simple. (Hint – make your username your museum name!)  I instantly received an email which meant I could register an object. I chose a Mak’Merry bowl because I knew a bit about it already and thought it had an interesting story. I was asked for some details which I already had on our collections database – size, colour, material, age of object and so on. The BBC have made it really simple – lots of tick boxes and drop-down lists. I also had to write 150 words on the ‘story of the object’. You might find some of it a bit too simple for museum standards, for example when choosing what size it is you might be debating between “Tiny – it fits in my hand” or “Medium – I can put my arms around it”. (I suppose it depends on the size of your body parts). From my education point of view, it’s a perfect way of getting the general public thinking about how to categorise their personal objects as part of history.

What are the benefits for you of putting an object up online? We use a lot of different sites to promote our collections – Scran, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Blog, plus our own website. If you don’t or can’t use any of these, the BBC is a really easy way of sharing your collections instantly, without worrying about the issues of copyright and managing such a site. As an experiment I did a Google search for ‘Mak’Merry bowl’, the BBC page came up third, after Flickr and our own online exhibition about pottery. Scran came up 5^th. I imagine most people around the world would recognise and trust the BBC brand meaning they are instantly more likely to look at this search result. As an added bonus, you can also put links to your own website beside your object so that interested parties can link directly back to you. So go on, you’ll be bowl-ed over by how easy it is!!

  Calling all photographers (good or otherwise), social networking followers, or anyone who has ever used Wikipedia to look up some obscure topic….That’s nearly everyone then. Well, we are very excited as Prestongrange Museum and John Muir’s Birthplace are taking part in a special Wikipedia initiative being held in February 2010.

 What’s it all about, I hear you cry! Get out of those wellies, knock the snow out of your ears and I’ll tell you more…

Wikipedia are holding a photography competition called ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’. The focus of it is that people will be encouraged (through prizes) to take photographs of their local museums and their collections and post them onto Wikipedia, hence generating much more interest and information surrounding museums in general. So we decided to run an event to coincide with this.

It’s called ‘East Lothian Photographers LOVE Wikipedia’ and its on Sunday 14th February at Prestongrange Museum and John Muir’s Birthplace.  We’re also offering free tea/coffee/tours at both venues from 1-4pm! It sounds like it could be really successful and a good, fun event to get new people into and using our venues. I just hope we get enough people who are interested…Please do help us by passing the details onto anyone you know who might be interested. Can you beat our rather stunning photography attempts? (This was taken by the passenger, I promise)

More details on our event: www.eastlothianmuseums.org/content/pages/events-and-activ…

And on the wikipedia competition which you might be interested in anyway:
uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Initiatives/Britain_Loves_Wikipedia

 And lastly, what did I last use Wikipedia to look up? The Glasgow Police Museum which I visited over the holidays. A very friendly reception so do pop in if you’re passing.

 As the ‘noughties’ draw to a close, it’s time to look back over the last 10 years. Do you remember the Millenium bug which was going to wipe out all computers? Or the Sydney Olympics? Unbelievably that was 10 years ago!

Talking in the office today, all museums staff have done various different things over the past 10 years from French Degrees to working in the Secret Bunker. And here we are, ending up with mainly female team heading into a new decade which will see the opening of 2 new museums – Musselburgh and the John Gray Centre. Plus the refurbishment of Dunbar Town House and various ongoing improvements at Prestongrange and John Muir’s Birthplace. There’s enough to keep us busy for the first few years anyway…

The BBC have compiled a list of the 20 most important objects of the last decade as well as a very clever illustration. These include a ‘Bag for Life’, iPod, Credit Card, Hoody and hair straightners. What would be your object of the last 10 years? Personally, mine would be my laptop.

Finally, on behalf of the Museums Service, I’d like to wish all our blog readers a merry Christmas and a happy new decade. Thanks for reading and for commenting throughout the year.  We hope to welcome you back to our sites next year – either web or museums!

 Hello, this is Kevin and I am both a volunteer within the Museum Service and a casual museum assistant at John Muir’s Birthplace. I’m here to tell you about what I do as a volunteer. I volunteer once a week, usually on a Wednesday, helping with the upkeep of the collection. The collection is a gallimaufry of objects of all shapes, sizes and varieties. I deal with the weird and wonderful, usually both simultaneously, that comes into the collection and am often found inputting new objects into our new online collections database. Each object is something new to learn about, an insight, however minute, into the life of this county in years past. Last week I was making a list of objects found in the back of a shop in Haddington High Street and was particularly interested by the masons’ marks on the various pieces of stone donated. Sometime I need to read up on that.

Volunteering here is an ever-varied enterprise. There are seven other volunteers here. We don’t often get to meet each other since we usually come in on different days, though today two of my comrades are here cataloguing archaeological artefacts in the Store. I am helping tidy the workroom, where new objects are kept in preparation for accessioning and storage, as well as sorting out some documents. We all have different areas of interest or expertise that we can add to our work – I usually accession objects relating to Dunbar, where I live, though when working with other objects I can sometimes bring some other obscure knowledge to the fore, for example about politics in the case of objects relating to curling.

I just went into the Museum Store, a climate controlled space where the vast majority of the collection – numbering around twelve thousand objects, at last count – is kept. I never fail to be distracted and drawn to some object far away from what I am looking for. In the Store I may be putting objects away, preparing others for display in exhibitions or taking photographs of objects as part of an audit. When I first visited, as a school student on work experience a few years ago, the stuffed seagulls and rodents and the small paddleboat from the old outdoor swimming pool in Dunbar particularly intrigued me. Now, older and slightly more refined, I get waylaid looking at paintings. I like landscape art and we have a few examples, including one I saw a moment ago on a beach looking out to sea with a few tiers of waves crashing to the shore. Having just checked the database entry, it is by Patrick W. Adam and depicting the low tide at Gullane.

Volunteering here is never dull and always throws up some new challenge, just to keep things exciting. It’s been nice to share some of that today. Bye for now.

   For those of you who are regular blog readers, you’ll know that Arun Gandhi was coming to East Lothian. I heard him talk on Monday and it was wonderful. He held a session for local school children in the afternoon and then the general public in the evening. He had lots of stories about how his grandfather (Mohandas Gandhi) had influenced his life and told them in such a reserved and calm manner. One story was about when he was a boy he threw away a pencil because he thought it was “too short” and was just going to ask his grandfather for a new one. However, Gandhi made him go back out and look for the pencil in the dark to teach him the lesson that man was over-using the world’s natural resources and that people consume things just because they can, but ultimately this means that others cannot access the same resources. Gandhi said Arun’s act was ”violence against nature”. It was interestingly a similar view to our own John Muir about the importance of protecting the environment, but before such issues had really reached the wider public conscience.

 We also went on a march on Saturday 10th October to commemorate the Suffragettes who campaigned for “Votes for Women!”. We had our own East Lothian banner, created by attendees at a Suffragette Coffee Morning back in September. A group of pupils from Preston Lodge High joined our group and managed to get themselves interviewed and in lots of photos throughout the walk! It ended on Calton Hill where speeches and singing took place. Sheila and I also walked to the very edge of the hill to get a few photos. It was a tad windy as you may be able to see from the photos!

 And as for the bellydancing reference in the title? Multi-Cultural Day at Prestongrange of course. We’ve got a variety of cultures represented including a French Puppet Show, Polish tour of the museum, an Indian Dancer, Zimbabwean Poets and the local Sangstream Choir and Grants Braes Burns Club. There will be a huge marquee outside the Visitor Centre and I’ll be heading there on Saturday to get it all set up and ready to go for first thing on Sunday. We have no idea what our visitor numbers will be for the day…hopefully the 144 chairs will be an alright guestimate!

If you’ve attended an event as part of Black History Month this year, do let us know what you thought!

Time flies. I can’t believe that it’s my last week to work in ELMS. Feel sad… Before I leave, I would like to introduce some museums in Taiwan on the museum blog. I will present two museums, National Palace Museum and Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum. Hope you like them. 

The National Palace Museum in Taiwan collects a variety of collections about ancient Chinese culture, such as jade, ceramic, calligraphy and paintings. For example, the Jadeite Cabbage. It looks fresh, close to the real one, fantastic.

The MeatStone. I suppose that many visitors would like to taste it because that it looks delicious! Apart from the jade and stone, you can visit other exhibitions by the web site.

 In the Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, the museum displays exhibitions, all related to ceramics. The museum has developed pottery-teaching online learning resources, like http://kids.ceramics.tpc.gov.tw/zh-tw/Hands/Hands1.aspx  As a result, visitors can access it without time and space limitation. Teachers can access it to support their classes as well.  

 The two museums in Taiwan are different from East Lothian Council Museums. All of the museums can play different roles and they can attract different visitors. It is good to introduce the two museums in Taiwan on the museum blog, which is really interactive. Hope you like the cabbage and the meatstone. Yummy!! 

It seems to me that the relationship between East Lothian Council Museums and their communities, Dunbar, Musselburgh and Prestonpans is very close. Museum services can be beneficial to the development of communities in different ways, for example, educational functions (loan box delivery and workshops), preserving their cultural spirit, entertainment and town image improvement.  The museum also provides collections and research functions for the public. The East Lothian Council Museums Collections Database, which I have mainly worked on during my placement, can let people see images of objects and obtain relevant information. People, who are interested in social history, art and local culture in East Lothian, can search their information by accessing the system. I am glad that I have a chance to contribute to this site and many thanks to my supervisor, Sheila. She has been patient, showing me how to set up, update and edit the system, which I have never worked on before.

In addition, I have had a variety of work experiences apart from the database, like involvement in education activities, handling, packing, numbering and meeting with an artist and movers. Very interesting! The museum makes efforts to broaden their services with new media strategies, such as the collections database system, mobile tour, Flickr and this Blog. It means the museums can engage with more potential visitors. I have created an account on Flickr, where I can upload many amazing photos, related to our museum services and add comments. The museum blog is the place where curators, volunteers and visitors can convey their ideas interactively. Anyway, I would like to say that I have learned a lot and enjoy working in the museum during this time. Everyone is so nice and I have gained a lot of fantastic experiences in East Lothian. 

Hey my name is Jenny and I’m a new volunteer here and in the words of Gloria Gaynor “I will survive!” Life here is very busy and today I have to go all the way to Prestongrange – ROAD TRIP!!! – So that’s interesting (to me and probably not to you hahahaha). The totem pole there is amazing I went there with my family a few months ago and my mum walked right passed it, she didn’t even notice! I think she needs new glasses. So anyway the reasons why I came:

1)      I am interested in history and would like to do a history degree so this helps

2)      It gives me more experience of a working environment

3)      My mum wanted me out of the house (joking joking)

 I find the collections room here fascinating as it’s amazing how many artefacts there are! The old typewriter is my favourite though as it reminds me how far the human race has evolved and makes me appreciate what we have NOTE: it looks heavy and hard to use.

I think that my favourite museum has to be the one in Chamber Street, Edinburgh as it has an amazing Egyptian collection and more importantly a fishpond – the fish are so beautiful. The Traprain treasure is also located there and is really worth a look, its located on the ground floor and if you get lost like I did just ask.

So yeah that’s enough from me for now but I will update on my progress, if I have the time!

I know I risk sounding like an over excited teenager (and yes that was a little while ago) but you really really need to see our amazing new online database. So, once you have finished reading this, click on www.elmscollections.org and marvel at the world Kye has created. Not only will the whole of the collection eventually be online (and this will take a while so bear with us) but you can become a registered user and post comments, information, stories, your thoughts, whatever you’d like to say really. Please also comment – tell us what you think of the database.  

On a sadder note Kye and Angus are going to finish up at the end of the month and they will be sorely missed here in Dunbar (and elsewhere in East Lothian too). I have a horrible feeling that we will discover just how much we need them on 1st July, just a few hours too late. Thanks both for all the hard work over the last few years, it has been great having you!

And no, for once this isn’t Sarah (stalwart blogger), nor is it Pete as it says above, it is Kate.