With contributions from academics and museum professionals, this edited volume explores the role of enthusiasm, creativity, and affection in the stewardship of "unloved" or under-appreciated museum collections and archives.

Introducing a broad range of innovative and creative qualitative methods, this accessible book shows you how to use them in research project while providing straightforward advice on how to approach every step of the process, from planning and organisation to writing up and disseminating research. It offers: Demonstration of creative methods using both primary or secondary data. Practical guidance on overcoming common hurdles, such as getting ethical clearance and conducting a risk assessment. Encouragement to reflect critically on the processes involved in research. The authors provide a complete toolkit for conducting research in geography, while ensuring the most cutting-edge methods are unintimidating to the reader.

From their quirky origins to their contemporary role as centers of advocacy, a look at the secret lives of science museums—past, present, and future. Science museums have paradoxes at their core. They must be accessible and fun while representing increasingly complex science. They must be both historic and contemporary. Their exhibits attract millions, but most of their objects remain in deep storage, seldom seen. This book delves into these conflicts, revealing the secret lives of science curators; where science objects come from and who uses them; and, ultimately, what science museums are for. With an insider’s eye, Samuel J. M. M. Alberti exposes the idiosyncratic past and intriguing current practices of these institutions—and sets out a map for their future.

This book comprehensively analyses the UK law and non-law instruments that care for cultural heritage. Viewing the law as a community of care, working with other communities, brings new insights to our understanding of cultural heritage protection, making this book of interest to legal and heritage academics and practitioners.

In recent years, many museums have implemented sweeping changes in how they engage audiences. However, changes to the field’s approaches to collections stewardship have come much more slowly. Active Collections critically examines existing approaches to museum collections and explores practical, yet radical, ways that museums can better manage their collections to actively advance their missions. Approaching the question of modern museum collection stewardship from a position of "tough love," the authors argue that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Examining the field’s relationship to objects, artifacts, and specimens, the volume explores the question of stewardship through the dissection of a broad range of issues, including questions of "quality over quantity," emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship. The essays look to insights from fields as diverse as forest management, library science, and the psychology of compulsive hoarding, to inform and innovate collection practices. Essay contributions come from both experienced museum professionals and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology, education, and history. The result is a critical exploration that makes the book essential reading for museum professionals, as well as those in training.

This book takes you behind the scenes, not into the museum collections but instead into the diverse experiences of the professionals doing the work. Hear from people across the field as they share their insights and reflections and offer specific strategies for individuals, institutions, and the field as a whole. Join ongoing discussions about topics such as the role of internships in museum work, what makes people leave the field, and what the phrase "diversity" really represents. Explore what it means to be at various stages of a museum career and learn strategies to help you get where you want to go. Part "self help" book and part "group memoir," the authentic voices of each author bring new perspectives and resources to each topic. Whether you read from start to finish, pick the chapters that speak to you personally or use this as an opportunity to explore new viewpoints, this book gives you plenty to explore.CONTENTSHierarchy of Staff Needs- Sarah ErdmanInternship Mottos to Live By- Emily TurnerEmerging Museum Professionals- Michael MadejaMidcareer Professionals- Sarah ErdmanDemystifying Museum Consultants- Claudia OcelloWorking Part-Time . . . Full-Time- Libby JonesFrontline Staff- Jesse r LentzSmall and Rural Museums- Alli Hartley-KongSpeaking Up- Jen Oleniczak BrownSelf-Care, Contentment, and Museum Work- Seema RaoManaging Museum Staff from the Back of the Pack- Michelle Mileham#ITweetMuseums- Mark B. SchlemmerMuseum Boards- Carol TangReal Talk: It's Not Just about Diversity, It's about Inclusion- Dina BaileyBeing the Role Model We Needed when We Were Younger- Alison Kennedy and Rayna MathisDecoded: Unveiling Professionalism in Museums- Janeen Bryant and Ryan HillMuseum Mama- Sarah ErdmanThe Joy in Our Work- Marieke Van DammeWhy Great People Are Leaving Museum- Dawn E. Salerno, Marieke Van Damme, Claudia Ocello, and Sarah Erdman

Since the eighteenth century, European administrators and officers, military men, soldiers, missionaries, doctors, wives, and servants moved back and forth between Britain and its growing imperial territories. The introduction of steam-powered vessels, and deep-docks to accommodate them at London ports, significantly reduced travel time for colonists and imperial servants traveling home to see their families, enjoy a period of study leave, or recuperate from the tropical climate. With their minds enervated by the sun, livers disrupted by the heat, and blood teeming with parasites, these patients brought the empire home and, in doing so, transformed medicine in Britain. With Imperial Bodies in London, Kristin D. Hussey offers a postcolonial history of medicine in London. Following mobile tropical bodies, her book challenges the idea of a uniquely domestic medical practice, arguing instead that British medicine was imperial medicine in the late Victorian era. Using the analytic tools of geography, she interrogates sites of encounter across the imperial metropolis to explore how medical research and practice were transformed and remade at the crossroads of empire.