Museums for Wikipedians

Museums for Wikipedians

I’ve been planning for some years to write reviews of museums from the point of view of wikipedians. Or more accurately their utility to wikipedians.

So what is the utility Wikipedians are looking for? Ultimately its content. Either (and perhaps most prominently) in the form of things that can be photographed and the images used in articles or inspiration for things to write about.

So from the point of view of wikipedians the ideal museum would consist of a series of well described encyclopedic items. Preferably isolated and with smooth flat lighting.

Obviously this isn’t what most museums are trying to do and what the wikipedian is looking for can clash with modern (and historic) museum design. For example a learning space tends from the POV of the average wikipedian to be empty space. Obviously its important for organised visits like school trips. Equally the concept of narrative is far less important. Wikipedia tends to focus on classes of objects or individual objects. Trying to tell a coherent story of the history of fooshire is more likely to to be a matter for books. The concept of the Encyclopedic museum does exist but is somewhat controversial (its critics tend to argue its an excuse for opposing repatriation) and requires a fairly large collection to be viable.

Notability requirements are also an issue. The vast amount of reliable sources covering military history mean that any museum with a military weapon collection is likely to have something of use. On the other hand unless there are a bunch of sources on gas stoves that I don’t know about, Leicester’s Gas Museum otherwise excellent collection is going to be of limited utility to wikipedians.

In general wikipedians are going to have to accept there are going to be large sections of any given museum that don’t have much to offer. The section of the local history museum with much the same collection of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic tools as every other local history museum is unlikely to have much that can be done with. The neolithic pottery on the other hand is where things can get more unique.

Its the useful stuff I’m looking to focus on. Museums don’t lose points for having 3 galleries devoted to sherds of Samian Ware. More broadly being a bad museum for wikipedians doesn’t mean I think it is a bad museum. A geology museum with a big but fairly standard mineral collection is going to run into the problem that wikipedia has probably got those areas covered. I still like that kind of museum.

Finally while not directly related to the content of the museum their publications tend to meet reliable source guidelines. So either in paper or electronic form such publications can add a lot to the value of their collections from the point of view of wikipedians.