Collections demography: stakeholders’ views on the lifetime of collections

Abstract

Recent guidance for British cultural heritage organisations that care for cultural collections recommends that planning of environmental controls should be done within the context of the ‘expected collection lifetime’, taking into account resources, significance, use and material change. The Collections Demography project is working towards a model of collection change in historic libraries and archives that aims to integrate these variables, and which, therefore, may aid implementation of the new guidance. A key element of the work is an innovative public engagement project that is seeking to engage stakeholders in conversations around the value and lifetime of collections. This paper outlines three aspects of the public engagement programme: interviews with users, a questionnaire survey of users, and workshops. The VALUE (Value and Lifetime – User Engagement) questionnaire is described in detail. In articular, results are presented which are relevant to the development of the Collections Demography model and the implementation of recent guidance. The analysis of the questionnaire provided data on stakeholders’ definitions of lifetime and their views on the desired lifetime of collections. The results also indicated that ‘context of use’ (e.g., the type of institution that holds a collection and the activities that can take place there) is associated with how stakeholders think about the value and lifetime of collections. Such results can inform modelling of collection change by providing justification for the use of particular damage thresholds and by providing a planning horizon over which damage should be assessed.

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