AHRC Capability for Collections Fund - Stream A (Facilities)

This bid draws together academic departments and professional services teams at UCL to benefit four collections of national or global significance, which are used in teaching, research and outreach to communities outside the university. UCL delivers innovative, research-based education, where students utilise objects from museum and collections to enhance their learning. UCL's pioneering role in object-based learning is founded not only on the outstanding collections held by the university, but also on UCL's scale and multi-disciplinary strengths, where research informs teaching and academics' practices are continually explored by researchers. One of the main limitations to enable further utilisation of these primary resources is lack of suitable space, and ageing storage facilities for the collections themselves.
This bid will deliver substantial improvements for collection storage and usability for the following collections: UCL Ethnography Collections in the Department of Anthropology, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, the Slade Archive and UCL Special Collections. Each of these collections is an outstanding research resource in its own right, but these are embedded within and form part of UCL's wider collection infrastructure and as such a successful application would provide significant benefit in conserving UCL's collections more widely, making them more accessible for both current and future generations of researchers. To summarize:
- The creation of a new enlarged collections space for Anthropology would consolidate collections in the building into a single fit-for-purpose space and increase our capacity for object-based teaching using our collections and our ability to work not just with students and researchers but with visiting artists, widening participation secondary school students, and communities.
- The current Covid-19 pandemic has emphasised the importance of digital access to cultural assets. To support this, we are requesting an upgrade to our Collections Management System (CMS) Adlib 7.5 to implement the use of externally produced and maintained vocabularies within the CMS thesaurus module.
- The bid also requests support to address immediate needs to improve the physical condition of some of our spaces. In the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, off-the-shelf storage units will replace outdated mid-19th century cases and shelving that is not fit for purpose. The floor where these units sit will be stripped and lined to ensure it is level. The Slade Archive requires similar refurbishment and replacement of shelving to provide conservation-standard conditions.
- The request for UCL Special Collections will provide capability to store, preserve and digitise materials in-house by replacing obsolete mobile racking, building a dedicated and contained Conservation Studio in the basement space and refurbishing the basement foyer space to provide a separate digitisation space. The basement space in DMS Watson contains the rarest and most heavily used of these materials and provides secure and environmentally-controlled storage. Finally, Special Collections currently has no dedicated teaching or engagement space or space for group student working (31% of users are current UCL students) and is limited in delivering classes or events due to lack of suitable object-handling space. The refurbishment of the Institute of Education reading room to provide flexible space that can be adapted for group work, teaching, volunteers, school and community groups.
The improvements to these facilities would open up access to collections for greater numbers of taught students to experience working with artefacts first-hand and support the long-term conservation of these objects for future use in research and outreach.