BTC Honorary Museum Coordinator's Report 5 July 2009

1. Blake House building

Defective repairs to guttering by SDC contractors in the early spring have led to further water penetration above the east fire door. The Consulting Architect has arranged remediation at no cost to BTC, with other rectifications expected.

Volunteers are carrying out small works within the agreed programme, generally on a Monday when the Museum is not open to the public. Good progress is being made with the opening up of the former Blake Room and with its conversion to a display area for large objects (e.g. Thompson's Mangle) and to provide for an area for small meetings. Work in connecting heating to this room and elsewhere is impeded by the Battle of Sedgemoor model. The future of the model is being actively considered and a proposal will be placed before the next BTC MSC meeting.

2. Equipment

Recent purchases have included a DLP projector, a set of display boards, an A2 laminator, archival boxes for the photograph collection and a netbook to assist with cataloguing. Sets of digitised photographs are displayed as slideshows on a large monitor using an Apple MacMini, and have attracted considerable interest from visitors.

3. Museum Collections

I am working closely with a group of volunteers (not all FOBM) to achieve a better understanding of the collection. The catalogue has been recompiled (over 80 volunteer-hour of effort) and is now in a workable state, but not yet fully coherent. It is becoming clear that the majority of the collection (over 50% ) consists of photographic material. Part of the photograph collection has been rehoused in archival boxes by two student volunteers, during which process it has become apparent that cataloguing is grossly incomplete and many duplicates are in existence. One experienced volunteer is working through the plan chests and making several interesting discoveries. A local OU history undergraduate is exploring the substantial number of unaccessioned items in the downstairs store with a view to adding them to the catalogue via the netbook. I have established that there is much archival material belonging the the Museum which is on loan to the SRO, including the mediaeval music mss and some electoral lists. Digitisation of our archive and the photographs is a high priority to help with public access to the collections.

4. Communication

The volunteer webmaster of the FOBM website http://www.blakemuseum.org.uk liaises with me to ensure a weekly update of progress is available for everyone to view. Images are mounted at the sister site http://www.bridgwatermuseum.org.uk (which is otherwise used at present for publishing of working documents). BT Callminder operates on 456127 and invites telephone enquirers to leave a message or send an email. Research enquiries are (mercifully) few so far, but have included one on Cave Art at Cannington Quarry which was answered by drawing upon expertise from BDAS members (who meet in the Museum regularly on Thursday mornings). Advertising copy has been provided to Mid-Somerset Newspapers series for free inclusion in Somerset Places - What's On.

5. Summary and recommendations

Satisfactory progress is being made in achieving a worthwhile experience for visitors. Investment in the infrastucture has helped. It would be good now for a volunteer group to begin work on improving the interpretation and labelling of displays. Greater input and faster response from volunteer stakeholders in the preparation and implementation of policy documents would enable better progress to be made in planning for future developments.