The working life of Museum of London

You may have been redirected here form the Museum of London, Museum of London Docklands or the Museum of London Archaeology websites. Unfortunately, we are experiencing some problems with our servers, as a result of which, our websites are currently down.

My colleagues have been working very hard at getting the sites up and running again since last week and over the week-end, and we hope to have normal services resume very soon.

In the meantime, please bear with us, and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions you have or help you need.

You can contact me by email at webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk. Alternatively, you can contact the various parts of Museum of London, or find out about visiting the Museums by looking at our last post Museum of London websites are currently down.

You may have noticed that our websites are down.  This is unfortunately due to a number of problems on our servers that we are working very hard on fixing and getting the sites up and running as soon as possible.

Please bear with us during this time.

Contacting Museum of London

If you need to contact the museums regarding visit information, bookings or events, please contact:

tel: 020 7001 9844
email: info@museumoflondon.org.uk

If you have any enquiries about our websites, please do not hesitate to contact us at webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Museum opening hours

Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands are open daily:

Mon to Sat: 10am-6pm
Sun: 10pm-6pm
Last admission: 5.30pm
Closed: 24 to 26 December

Visiting the Museums

Information about Museum of London

Museum of London
London Wall
London EC2Y 5HN

By tube: Barbican, St Paul’s, Moorgate
By bus: 4, 8, 25, 56, 100, 25, 172, 242, 521
Parking: Paid parking nearby

Information about Museum of London Docklands

Museum of London Docklands
West India Quay
Canary Wharf
London E14 4AL

By DLR: West India Quay
By Tube: Canary Wharf
By Bus: D3, D7, D8, 277, N50, D6, 15, 115, 135

Information about Museum of London Archaeology

Mortimer Wheeler House
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London N1 7ED

tel: 020 7410 2200
email: molas@museumoflondon.org.uk

So a few weeks ago we decided to sign up Museum of London on Twitter, feeling a bit sceptical about how many people would really be interested in finding out about us and following our tweets. I have to admit to being pleasantly surprised at the number of people who have decided to ‘follow’ us within such a short period of time.

So far our tweets have been about current and upcoming events taking place at our museums which we think may be of interest to our visitors, with a few general comments thrown in for added benefit.

But is this really what you want? What would you like as to tweet about?

You can find us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/museumoflondon

Feel free to send your comments and suggestions either here on the blog, via email to webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk, or off course, by tweeting on Twitter, adding the tag #museumoflondon to your comments so that we can follow what you are saying about the Museum of London.

Don’t forget we are also on Facebook!

• Museum of London Facebook fan page:
  www.facebook.com/pages/Museum-of-London/27560776046?ref=ts
• Museum of London Facebook ‘late’ page:
  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7856761651
• Museum of London Docklands Facebook ‘late’ page:
  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=20481470787

We have the great pleasure of telling you that we have now moved hosts!

We had a number of problems in the past few months with our previous host when the website kept going down resulting in our blogs being unavailable. However, we hope that this is now fixed.

Thank you for your patience and for continuing to visit our site during this period of change. If you still encounter any problems, please do not hesitate to contact me at webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Regards,
Bilkis Mosoddik.

Dear mymuseumoflondon visitor,

I know you may have had difficulty accessing our blog entries for the past few weeks as we have been experiencing some problems with our host. This is just an update to say that we are moving hosts very soon and hopefully you will no longer experience any problems.

Thank you for your continuing support.

Regards,
Bilkis Mosoddik.

Happy New Year to all our readers from the Museum of London!

late events

Just to let everyone know that the ‘late’ events are not happening in January at all, but the next late events are on Thursday 5 February 2009, 6-9pm

Museum of London: Write Queer London
Join us for an evening of smart talk, wise words and music in celebration of London’s Queer history.

Museum of London Docklands: LandFall
Celebrate the opening of LandFall, our new exhibition, with an evening of poetry and live chamber music and voice.

Need something to do?

If you are looking to do something in the coming weeks, why not visit the Museum of London or the Museum of London Docklands?

At Museum of London
We have an exhibition in the Museum of London foyer called ‘Homeless in the Capital’, until 22 February 2009

Video and audio interviews, twenty-four hour diaries, poetry, art and personal belongings all offer insights into the everyday lives of people who are or have been homeless in central London. More about Homeless in the Capital

At Museum of London Docklands
A new exhibition at Museum of London called ‘LandFall’, from 6 February until 31 May 2009

Explore the Atlantic Ocean as natural phenomenon and transporter of dreams and peoples in this new exhibition. More about LandFall

Snap up London for £15!

Become a new Friend of Museum of London between 9 December 2008 and 28 February 2009 and get London: The Illustrated History half price! More about Friends offer

Wishing you all a great 2009!

Some of you may remember from my last blog that I mentioned that the Museum of London websites were changing inline with our rebranding to bring together our  venues and values, with new names and logos. We have now completed phase one of redesigning and moving around content on our websites. You can check out our striking new logos and our redesigned websites at:

• www.museumoflondon.org.uk
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands
• www.museumoflondon.org.uk/archaeology

In phase two and three, we will be auditing all our websites, holding audience evaluations to find out what our visitors think, and planning and implementing the migration of all our websites into one single site. This will involve analysis of our current website structures and planning the future architecture and redesigning of all the templates within our websites, including our microsites.

We would love to find out what you think of the websites and how it might develop in the future. So tell us what you think of the sites and the new ‘tabs’ that combine all our three venues together by sending me your comments to: webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Please note that we are aware some things may not display properly or some links may be broken, but please bear with us while we go through this transition period.

Thank you for all your continued support.

Museum of London is updating its branding and as a result the websites are undergoing a redesign for the rebrand launch on 14 October 2008.

We have been very busy working behind the screens to migrate the information from our ‘Group’ website to the Museum of London website and ensuring the rebrand is reflected in the Museum of London Docklands website (previously Museum in Docklands) and the Museum of London Archaeology website (Previously Museum of London Archaeology Service, or MoLAS).

You will see the new logos and redesigned sites when you visit us on 14 October, and the ‘Group’ website will no longer be updated and will eventually cease to exist.

This is just phase one of our plans. We aim to move all Museum of London content into a single website and will be planning further design changes and architectural changes to the site.

We would like to find out what our visitors think of the websites as of 14 October and how it might develop in the future. Please send your comments to: webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

And if you participate in our focus groups to tell us what you think of our new website design, you will receive £30!

If you are interested in getting involved, and giving us your views, please visit:

www.creativeresearch.co.uk/surveys/mol/molrecruit.htm

Please note we are looking to hear from:

• Individuals aged 16 and above,
• Families (one adult aged 25 to 50 and one child aged 5 to 15 per family),
• People from both the UK and from overseas, and
• You do not need to be familiar with the Museum or its subject matter to take part.

Hello, my name is Bilkis Mosoddik and I am the web content manager for the Museum of London Group. Unlike my colleague Jeremy, I would not call myself a geek. I am simply a person who happens to enjoy interacting with technology and feel blessed that I enjoy what I do and earn a living from it, thank you!

I have been working for the Museum of London Group for more than two years now and it was more by accident than design that I ended up here as I never considered a career in museums before. Imagine my surprise when I first realised that the museum is more than just a place for curators and archaeologists to work in!

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. One day I wanted to be a pilot and the next I would want to be a doctor. I nicely went along in this indecisive state doing what I enjoyed most, ‘fooling’ around with computers, whilst I decided on a ‘real career’.

And then one day I realised, “hey, I get paid to enjoy myself ‘fool’ around!” and here I am, still enjoying myself, still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.

As a web content manager, I am responsible for all the Museum of London, the Museum in Docklands, the Museum of London Group, and the Museum of London Archaeology websites and the staff Intranet.

My role varies from providing training to web authors within the Museum, to editing, approving and publishing content. Some days I could be reading about a fascinating find and editing amazing images to add to the websites, whilst other days I could be in meetings all day, talking about things ranging from usability, accessibility and diversity, and discussing new websites and games.

I do not design websites nor develop them, though I have a lot of input in any new websites that are created. I leave the headaches of coding and fixing bugs to my colleagues Jeremy and Mia!

I have many projects I am involved with at present and one of them is to make the Group websites accessible and usable as per the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines.

An independent audit of our websites were carried out earlier this year, and the findings involved recommendations for improving parts of the site that were failing accessibility and usability either because of the design or the content.

My colleague, Jeremy, and I have been working on implementing these recommendations to make the site AA standard and we are constantly discovering new possibilities.

I won’t take up more time – I can go on forever about all the things I do at the Museum! So for now, I can say things to look out for in the New Year is a brand new Archaeology website that we have developed and just finished user testing on. We also have new major exhibitions at the Museum of London and Museum in Docklands that will have a huge web presence, so look out for those.