The working life of Museum of London

Following on from last week’s post about my research on the use of two social software by Museum of London; blogs and Facebook, this week I will write a little bit about a few interesting findings I came across during my research.

As part of my research, I had emailed the top ten London museums (according to UKguide.org, see below for list) and received a response for my questions. According to the responses I got back and the research I carried out on the web, out of the ten museums (of which, Museum of London is one), four museums had a blog site or were about to launch a blog site, while the remaining six were exploring the possibility of creating one. In addition, out of the ten museums, nine already had a presence on Facebook.

I also came across the results of a questionnaire of 270 managers in cultural institutions from across the world carried out by Communicating the Museum at a conference in June 2009. It showed that 61% of these managers had a high knowledge of social networking despite 32% having no affiliation with any social networks themselves. It was also discovered that more institutions intended to move into social media, though a majority of cultural institutions were still using their websites for most communications and were not using social software tools at all. Remarkably, however, where cultural organisations did use any social software, the most popular tool used was Facebook to promote events and organisation brands.

These are just a few general findings that the student part of me (I was studying for my Masters at UCL and this research was for a dissertation – see my last post for more information) tried to be impartial about but the employee part of me found exceedingly interesting. The employee in me was also happy with the conclusion reached by Freshminds who carried out research on behalf of the DCMS, that using existing social networks can “open doors for cultural organisations trying to attract new, more diverse audiences”, and felt spurred on to do further research.

My next post will outline the methodology I used to research the impact of the Museum of London blog site on the main Museum of London website, so do check back.

Top ten London Museums

“London Museum Guide” on Ukguide.org Says that the top ten museums in London are:

• British Museum,
• Science Museum,
• Tate Gallery,
• Victoria & Albert Museum,
• National Gallery,
• Imperial War Museum,
• Natural History Museum,
• National Maritime Museum,
• London Transport Museum,
• Museum of London.

Updated 9 November 2009:

Communicating the Museum, Results of the Questionnaire: Digital Mix PDF of presentation slides can be found at www.agendacom.com/Resultats-Questionnaire-Digital-Mix.html