Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use the data for my own study?

Yes, all the data is open access and can be downloaded under the terms set by Creative Commons (BY). This allows all users to copy, distribute, remix, and build upon the Mapping Museums data, so long as the Mapping Museums team is credited with its original creation.

How do I credit the data in my work?

We recommend that you use the following citation:

‘Mapping Museums project website’ Available at www.mappingmuseums.org Accessed (date)

I’ve spotted a mistake: can it be corrected?

Can I add a museum to the database?

How up to date is your data?

The last major update was in autumn 2019. Since then there have been incremental updates.

Will the data continue to be updated?

The Mapping Museums project was funded from October 2016 until September 2020. The data will be updated on an incremental basis as far as staff time and further funding permits. However, in the absence of dedicated staff we will be increasingly reliant on users supplying us with new data so please do keep us informed.

Why do we need a database of UK museums?

Until now, there was no single, longitudinal dataset of museums that covers the whole of the UK sector, and there was no way to connect past and current surveys. Most museum surveys and reviews do not note years of opening, and until very recently, no one kept records of museum closure. This made it impossible to track national and regional disparities, the prevalence of museums with different types of governance or of museums devoted to different subjects, or to examine change over time.

Further reading:

What is a museum?

Definitions of museums change over time and differ between countries. There is also a difference between how museum professionals officially define museums and how they are more commonly understood.

Professional definitions are intended to encourage museums to reach professionally established standards of collections care, interpretation, governance, and visitor provision. They function like shorthand for an ethical code, and in many instances they provide a benchmark by which museums are assessed if they apply for public funding. Popular understandings of museums are much more expansive and encompass many museums that would not be formally acknowledged as such by professionals. The Mapping Museums team took a similarly inclusive view of what a museum is.

Further reading:

How did you decide which museums to include in the dataset?

We did not use the official definitions, as this would have limited our list to museums that reached professional standards. We wanted to include a wide range of museums in our analysis. In most cases this was reasonably straightforward because the museums were widely recognised as such and had appeared in previous museum surveys, guidebooks, museum directories, and in the tourist literature on museums. In some cases, it was less obvious and in these instances we considered a wide range of factors when making decisions about which venues to include. We checked to see if they were members of a museum association. We looked to see if they had collections, and considered how and where the objects were exhibited. We checked if the site was accessible to the public, if they had signs outside the building, websites, and publicity material. When possible we found out whether the owner, founders, staff or volunteers considered the place to be a museum, and we noted public opinions on TripAdvisor, blogs and in visitor books.

We generally expected museums to have a permanent collection, artefacts on display, to be regularly open to the public, and to have a threshold. This later condition was intended to distinguish museums from displays in the hallways or reception rooms of public buildings or corporate headquarters.

Further reading:

What did you exclude from the dataset?

We excluded commercial art galleries, galleries without permanent collections, and displays in the entrance halls and corridors of businesses, hospitals, schools, and public buildings. We excluded temporary and pop-up museums, online museums, mobile museums, and also zoos, aquaria, botanical gardens, libraries, archives, and monuments unless they contained a standalone museum. Historic buildings such as lighthouses, windmills, watermills and archaeological sites were considered on a case by case basis and we usually only included those that had linked exhibitions, contained indigenous contents, or had been fitted out with period décor.

How have you listed museums with several branches?

When a museum has branch institutions then we have listed each venue separately. This enables users to identify the different locations and foundation dates of each branch. For instance Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, Tate Modern, and Tate St Ives all have separate entries.

How have you listed local authority museums that have transferred management to trusts or have outsourced management to businesses?

Most local authorities that have transferred or outsourced the responsibility for the day to day management of museums have retained ownership of the buildings and the collections. Thus we have continued to list these museums as local authority. This decision was also informed by the need to produce an accurate historical record – if we had listed ‘asset transfer’ museums as independent then it would appear that more independent museums had previously opened than was indeed the case.

We have identified museums where outsourcing has taken place by using the keyword 'hybrid' within the Notes field of the museum’s record in the database. The few museums where there has been a complete transfer of responsibility have the keyword ‘governance change’. To view lists and records of either group go to Database Search, choose ‘Notes’ from the Select attribute drop-down list and enter the relevant key word or phrase.

How have you listed places where there is more than one museum on the premises?

In some instances, several museums are clustered on the same site, in other instances one museum may be housed within another (e.g. a regimental museum within a castle). So long as they have distinct identities (e.g. separate names, spaces, and governance structures) then we have listed them separately. Where one museum has been amalgamated into another then we class the museum that moved as having closed.

Why does the project begin in 1960?

The huge expansion of the UK museum sector was generally thought to have started in the 1970s or 1980s. We wanted to begin our study slightly earlier to get a sense of when that increase occurred. Plus, the Standing Committee on Museums and Galleries published the Survey of Provincial Museums and Galleries in 1963, which included a list of museums open in the UK in 1960, and this provided a useful starting point for data collection.

How did you build the database?

When I search under subject matter, the results do not show all the museums with collections in that area.

Subject Matter relates to the overarching topic addressed by the museum and not to the individual collections within a museum. For instance, searching for archaeology museums only shows the museums that are specifically focused on archaeology.

When searching for collections it can be helpful to look at other categories. For instance, encyclopaedic museums often have archaeological collections. Likewise, if you wanted to find collections of aeroplanes it would be useful to look at transport / aviation, transport / mixed, and also war and conflict / airforce.

Browse, search, and visualise sometimes give slightly different results to the same question. Have I made a mistake?

No. The difference is due to the way that uncertain dates are handled within the database. When we do not have the precise date when a museum opened or closed, we use a date range, for instance a museum can be logged as having opened between 1985 and 1989. In the Browse facility, museums’ opening and closing dates are taken to be the mid point of the specified range. The Search facility provides users with the option of searching by definite dates, so that the results exclude all museums whose date range doesn’t fully lie within the specified period; or by possible dates, in which case the results include museums whose date range intersects with the specified period. In the Visualisation facility, we use a ‘smearing’ operation within our statistical analyses: for example, if a museum is known to have opened between 1985 and 1989, then the count of one museum is spread evenly over the 5 years 1985, 86, 87, 88, 89, with a ‘count’ of 0.2 being assigned to each year. Thus, searching for museums that opened on specific dates or between two dates will produce slightly different results across the three functions.

There seems to be a jump in the number of museums that opened in 2017. Is that correct?

No, most of the data collection was done between 2016 and 2017. It was usually clear if a museum was open at this point. Logically, if a museum was open it must have opened before 2017 and so if we had to set a date range we often gave 2017 as a cut off point. This has created a statistical blip that makes it appear that more museums were open at that point than is in fact the case.