About

Blurb

This fourth edition of Museum Basics has been produced for use in the many museums worldwide that operate with few professional staff and limited resources. The fourth edition has been fully updated to reflect the many changes that have taken place in museums around the world over the last six years.

Drawing from a wide range of practical experience, the authors provide a basic guide to all aspects of museum work, from audience development and learning, through collections management and conservation, to museum management and forward planning. Museum Basics is organised on a modular basis, with over 100 units in eight sections. It can be used both as a reference work to assist day-to-day museum management, and as the key textbook in pre-service and in-service museum training programmes, where it can be supplemented by case studies, project work and group discussion. This edition includes over 100 diagrams to support the text, as well as a glossary, sources of information and support and a select bibliography. Museum Basics is also supported by its own companion website, which provides a wide range of additional resources for readers.

Museum Basics aims to help the museum practitioner keep up to date with new thinking about the function of museums and their relationships with the communities they serve. The training materials provided within the book are also suitable for pre-service and in-service students who wish to gain a full understanding of work in a museum.

Contents

Foreword

Museums have come a long way from being temples to forming institutions that play an active role in society and create meaning. And this transformation is ongoing. Change is a constant in museums as it is in the world. This being so, Museum Basics has remained a staple: a pertinent handbook since it was first published in 1993. It has served museum professionals in institutions of varying size and in countries of diverse demographics. As a Museum Studies lecturer, I can testify that it has informed many students and museum-related courses.

ICOM envisaged this publication as a training manual and it has fulfilled this objective, in keeping with our organisation’s continual quest for capacity-building and promotion of professional standards. The authors, who display a perfect command of the subject, have updated this edition with insight into recent developments in museum practice, introducing new topics and maintaining old, but relevant, ones, thus proving the relevance of this book across cultures and time.

I welcome the fourth edition of Museum Basics with great enthusiasm, just as I did the previous editions for their always fresh approach to defining professionalism and assisting museums in their day-to-day management. This edition provides a toolbox with which to tackle the challenges of our times be they financial hardship, implementation of new technologies or disaster risk management.

Museum Basics has been an inspiring example of ICOM’s commitment to serving the museum community. We continue to support the revision and translation of this handbook in accordance with our entrenched priority to support professional development within the museums community.

Suay Aksoy
President, International Council of Museums (ICOM)