Museums Lives: Oral history and the Natural History Museum

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The Natural History Museum is a world-class repository of 70 million specimens and an international centre of excellence in scientific study with a rich tradition of informing the public about the natural world. Its staff have personal knowledge of the Museum's history, staffing, collection development, methodologies and exhibitions which constitute an important cultural resource, yet there is no sustained programme to capture these memories. Museum Lives aims to rectify this and to create a high-quality multimedia resource for scholarship, education and exhibitions that will enrich the historical record and add new dimensions to the collections which will attract fresh audiences. Museum Lives grows out of the AHRC-funded New Perspectives project, in the course of which the NHM management has expressed concern at the loss of knowledge as Museum staff move on. Over the next five years, for example, 24 specialist staff will retire, representing 775 years of experience. While their publications concentrate on advancing knowledge in their specialist fields, their memories have value in disciplines such as science history, museum practice, sociology, management, politics, anthropology, geography and education. Kingston University, through the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) and its partner the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences (FHSCS), has specialised skills to address this urgent need by capturing this information in ways that will maximise its value for the Museum, its public and the academic community. A KTF is the ideal means of transferring these skills. Kingston FASS and the FHSCS, together with the Museum, propose a three-year KTF to create an oral history programme based on best current practice and tailored to the Museum's needs. It will draw on knowledge in the two faculties to ensure the outputs meet the needs of a broad range of stakeholders. The long-term aim is to embed the programme in the Museum's work so that preservation of knowledge on these lines becomes routine. Volunteer oral historians will also be trained, staff will receive help in recording their own memories and the project will stimulate the recovery of lost knowledge through themed 'witness seminars'. The core project will create records relating to 50 interview subjects from across the Museum staff. This number reflects the exceptional experience of the subjects, the value of their knowledge and the quality of the multimedia outputs. For example, a curator's biography will be researched and he or she will be interviewed at length on camera, generating a searchable archive record and transcript. From this material themes will be identified for short films made to production standards suitable for educational and exhibition use -- often shot alongside specimens of which the curator has particular knowledge. Such films will be permanently linked to the specimens in the Museum's digital database and may also be used in connection with the specimens in public exhibition.The oral history resource will be available in edited form for public viewing on the Museum website and will be designed to be capable of use in the Museum's public exhibitions and learning programmes. By adding a new human and cultural dimension to artefacts hitherto recorded primarily as taxonomic objects, this could be a powerful tool in engaging new audiences. The material will be available to school and college students working on projects related to the collection, and to artists, filmmakers, broadcasters, writers and poets who can use these stories as inspiration. The National Life Story Collection has been extensively 'mined' in this way, while the Columbia Oral History office has formed the basis for more than 1,000 books.