At the AAMs this year, I was on a panel discussing the future of museum research in the 21st century. This panel was prompted by the 2005 IMLS study about the status of data collection in the nation’s museums. If you haven’t read the study’s report, you might want to check it out — it is available online at: http://www.imls.gov/pdf/Museum_Data_Collection.pdf
The purpose of the study was to explore “the status of data collection about museums” and “include a current assessment of the data regularly and systematically collected about museums in the United States; an analysis of the data’s usefulness; and recommendations for options to improve the collection and sharing of data about museums” (p.1). In doing so, this report built upon a similar study in 1998 — the last time a study of this magnitude was undertaken.
While conducting the study, the authors “repeatedly heard the need for (1) a regular, systematically conducted national census to gather core data using consistent definitions, (2) a forum for research in progress, and (3) a repository or clearinghouse for completed surveys or research in progress” (p.3).
These are all great ideas, and it is wonderful that the museum community recognizes the need to gather and share systematic and standardized data about museums. What is sad, however, is that these recommendations are almost identical to the recommendations made in the 1998 report. Even worse, the authors of the 2005 report found that since 1998, “little had been done to address those recommendations” (p.3).
At the AAMs, we speculated on why this might be the case, and discussed a variety of ideas for improving the situation. For instance, one idea was to get more museum professionals involved in research, and more university researchers involved in museum practice, as there is often not enough interplay between these groups. But no simple solutions were found.
Of course, great progress is being made collecting and sharing data about museum research. For instance, the Getty’s Office of Institutional Research has a great website where one can download results of their user surveys and other studies: http://www.getty.edu/about/institutional_research/
Yet as more museum professionals work to integrate media and technology into their museums, it will become even more important that regularized data benchmarks be established to allow for comparisons between projects and to help others avoid re-inventing the wheel each time a new project is started.
