The working life of Museum of London

Welcome to the Visitor Service team’s first blog entry! The Visitor Services team here at Museum of London aims to engage and enthuse every visitor that walks through the door with our passion for London. We hope that this extends into our blog posts. In the coming months we’ll be making our recommendations for all things London plus a few highlights from our travels elsewhere. We hope that through our blog you’ll get to know us better, our personal obsessions, interests and past times – basically what we’re into each month.

If you do follow up a recommendation let us know what you thought of it either by …

• Popping in to see us in the galleries, you can’t miss us – we’re usually walking around with a chainmail hood, hand axe or similar – oh and the uniform’s a bit of a give away too!
• Sending us a letter – we love post! 150 London Wall, EC2Y 5HN
• Commenting on here, the Museum’s Facebook page, Tweeting at us… etc
• Dropping us an email – hosts-mol@museumoflondon.org.uk

So here are the things we’re into this month ….

A couple of the gang went to Tower 42. Amazing views – including out across the Olympic site, great service, nice Tapas type food. Very chic. Book a couple of weeks in advance though.

Chris visited Greenwich on a sunny Monday – recommended for a week day because area is much quieter then. Begin the day by having milkshakes at a café which promises over 100 flavours of milkshakes just down from the Cutty Sark. Visit the Maritime Museum and learn about British sea voyages, the telescope and take in a show at the Planetarium. Have lunch at one of the cheap Thai/Chinese places around Cutty Sark aimed at students – you get the £ to portion ratio!! Top tip - to try get in on the kids’ session at the Maritime Museum as they come up with some classic lines and are clearly legends in the making.

Rachel, Ashley and Leigh finally made it to a Jack the Ripper walk (having been promising to go for ages). They went on a walk organised by London Walks with Donald Rumbelow. A good one to go to with a bunch of mates and he really knows his stuff. When you’re done head for a curry in Brick lane. You can also buy Donald’s book, The Complete Jack the Ripper, in the Museum shop.

Our newest discovery is Jen’s Café in China Town – head there for ‘bubble tea’. Any flavour is good.

Ashley visited the Imperial War Museum and recommends the special exhibition on espionage.

A bit further afield, Kareen went to a cool coffee place in Stockholm on Sveavägen which is one of the main roads in the city. The place was full of strange antiquities and had a view out onto most of the city. Well worth a visit.

And Rachel headed to Paris - visiting the catacombs. Walk through the old underground quarries deep beneath the city streets that hold the remains of (allegedly) over six million Parisians.

And finally we have to give ourselves a quick plug … we (of course) recommend our brilliant Gallery Highlight Tours at 12.00 and 4pm every day – come and hear about 450,000 years of London history including Roman bikinis, medieval castration tools and prehistoric trepanation.

Post by Rachel Kuhn, Team Leader

LAARC VIP5

We’re back! And refreshed after the coldness of January, we’re revitalised and ready for the fifth LAARC Volunteer Inclusion Project (VIP5)

Over the next few weeks we shall be recruiting 20 new VIP volunteers for 10 weeks of finds handling, archive improving and skill acquiring work. Sites that we intend to improve this time around include the huge Trig Lane site from 1974 (TL74), the London Docks site, also from 1974 (LH74) and the excellent Chaucer House site from 1975 (CH75)

In addition to the new 20, we welcome back 6 VIP Graduates, who have all volunteered in previous VIP programmes. Their work will also include a focus on leather finds, in an attempt to improve a large quantity of our leather collection.

The VIP project is slowly transforming the Museum’s archaeological collections, taking neglected finds from the 1970’s, objects that never had the funds to be housed properly, and giving them a new home, in a clear plastic bag with two legible labels and numerically organised neighbouring objects in new sturdy, standard sized boxes.

The previous projects have seen volunteers improve 1245 boxes of general finds, audit over 10,000 individually registered finds, move archives from 353 sites excavated between 1972 – 1987 on to new shelves in our metal store and complete work on the whole finds archive from 2005’s community excavation in Shoreditch Park.

As per previous projects, we have organised four specialist workshops which aim to provide volunteers, both VIP and throughout the Museum of London, with basic background knowledge of the material they will get to handle

Find out how we progress by viewing these blog pages which are kept updated each week as well as our project photos on Flickr.

Paget ’s disease

A major difficulty when diagnosing pathological disease in archaeological skeletal remains is that many conditions may only affect the soft tissues of the body, such as the skin or organs. This may result in the death of a person before bone changes took place, leaving no visible traces on the skeleton to be observed. Some diseases, however, may directly affect the bones. The way that bone responds and the distribution pattern of changes throughout the skeleton, enable certain pathologies suffered in life to be identified.

One such pathology occasionally encountered in the osteological analysis of archaeological human bone is Paget’s disease. During life, the human skeleton constantly remodels, repairs and grows. Paget’s disease disrupts this normal routine and results in an increased bone turnover. This can affect single or multiple bones and involve the entire skeleton, resulting in severe deformity and enlargement of affected areas. The skull, spine, sacrum and upper legs are the most commonly involved.

This rare condition was first described by James Paget in 1877. Today the exact causes remain unknown and multiple origins are thought likely. In modern cases, the disease is more common amongst males than females and tends to affect older individuals.

The osteological analysis of post-medieval population from Bow Baptist Church, London by MoLA revealed one individual who displayed bone changes consistent with a diagnosis of Paget’s disease.

An older male aged 46 years or over displayed thickening of the cranial bones with new bone formed to the internal and outer surfaces that was porous and pumice stone like. Examination of radiographs revealed enlargement of the bone cortex with areas that displayed a ‘cotton wool’ like appearance.

The vertebral bodies also showed enlargement and this was more apparent in the lower lumbar regions of the spine. Radiographs showed sclerotic areas (thickening) at the margins of the vertebral centra and areas of porosity to the internal trabecular structures. This gave a ‘picture frame’ appearance in radiographs. The disease had also resulted in deformity and enlargement to the clavicles (collar bone), scapula (shoulder) upper legs and pelvis.

Pathological fractures are a common feature of this disease due to weakening of the bone structures that may cause bowing of the limbs. This individual had suffered compression fractures to several vertebrae. This had also resulted in degenerative joint disease and osteoarthritis throughout the spine. Osteoarthritis was also recorded in the hands and shoulder joints.

This individual may have been unaware that he had such a disease during life as many cases are asymptomatic. However, some people can suffer bone pain, headaches and hearing loss.

For more information see:

Brickley, M, and Ives, R, 2008 The bioarchaeology of metabolic disease, Oxford

Ortner DJ, 2003, Identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains. London

Roberts, C A, and Manchester, K, 2005, The archaeology of disease, Third edition, Stroud

Well I am back in the office after just over a week and have finally managed to go through all the emails and urgent updates on the websites and staff Intranet, I thought I’d take a few minutes to wish you all a very Happy New Year from everyone at Museum of London and tell you that some wonderful new things are happening this year, so watch out for them.

If you don’t yet know, we will be opening our new Galleries of Modern London at Museum of London in May and as of the 1st of January, we are revealing daily, the 1919 Diary of Oscar Kirk, a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority. You can follow daily tweets from Oscar at http://twitter.com/oscarkirk1919.

Also coming soon is a new gallery, “War, Plague & Fire“, telling the story of London from the Elizabethan times, through the ravages of the English Civil Wars to the Great Fire of 1666 at Museum of London, and a display of post abolition commemorative stamps from around the world at Museum of London Docklands.

All that and so much more to look forward to this year, so stay tuned to find out more!

Every year Museum of London employees get to attend a staff Christmas lunch for a small amount towards costs at the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor. Since I started working for Museum of London, I have been attended these lunches every year, and this year was even more special as I had many new colleagues who have joined the Museum, with whom I was able to spend some time.

The day started off very excitedly with many people doing last minute finishing touches to their hats that they will bring along to the lunch where the Lord Mayor and the Mayoress would judge them, and the owner of the best hat creation would win a prize. We make our way down to the Guildhall around 12.30pm, hoping to find the best seat, choosing the person we wish to sit next to (or not!) and generally starting the ‘party’.

Some people bring along Christmas crackers and party poopers, and the very brave even bring along squeaking balloons that they compete to try and get the balloons to go as high as possible.

We start of with starters (this year it was artichoke soup), then continue the meal through a main course until desserts (yum!). Finally, we stand up to toast the Queen and the Lord Mayor and the City of London. Inevitably, by the end of the lunch and the many toasts, some people are a little worse for wear and head off home (we’re not allowed to go back to work after drinking alcohol, so most people take the afternoon off).

Throughout the lunch, the Lord Mayor and Mayoress look around and decide on the best made hat. I am proud to say Museum of London has won this competition on and off for many years, but have held on to the title consecutively for the last three. Each year, only one winner stands out, and ladies and gentleman, the prize for the best hat this year went to…

Carol Thompson and Tanya Pollard of Museum of London!

Both did so well that the judges decided to make a first and make them joint winners. Carol especially was thrilled as she had won the hat competition two year ago as well.

I started volunteering at LAARC back in 2003, was employed here in 2004 and have been here ever since. On a day to day basis I get to handle some of the world’s best objects. But forget all them at this time of year, as there’s one annual object that get’s me more excited than any other – the LAARC Gingerbread house!

The history of Gingerbread seems to go back over 500 years with Germanic/Swedish origins, arriving in Britain in the 1500’s and being widespread by the 1700’s. But I’m not here to write about the history of Gingerbread, but instead the Archaeological Archive’s tradition of making a Gingerbread House each Christmas.

Back in 2003, LAARC had a full time conservator, Jannicke who came from Norway. It was she who first introduced the Gingerbread house to the archive. Keeping with Scandinavian tradition, the house was decorated for Christmas and sat proudly as the centre piece at our Christmas party. Decorated with an abundance of sugary sweets, bonded together with icing sugar, it’s a dentist’s worst nightmare, but looks a dream. Its true moment of glory however, is when it gets smashed, revealing even more sweets and chocolates inside.

Ever since then, despite Jannicke leaving in 2005, we’ve kept up the tradition of decorating a house each year and along the way have watched it evolve into one of the highlights of each Christmas party.

The smashing of the house is now preceded by two events; the decorating and the competition to determine who gets to smash it. The decorating gets done by LAARC staff in a creative morning session, where we let our artistic skills flow. The competition’s vary and have previously included a Christmas caption competition, a Christmas catapult competition and a Christmas song quiz. This year, we were very lucky to have Jannicke join us at our party and as our guest of honour, she along with her 1 year old daughter and volunteer Chris (he volunteered the most this year)  got to be the smashers.

We may not be as grand as the recent Obama Gingerbread WhiteHouse, but it’s a nice little tradition we have and long may it continue!

This month the Museum of London Docklands launches a web-based initiative bringing to life London’s Docklands in the early twentieth century through the diary extracts of a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority at the time. Recently donated to our collection, the diary details Oscar’s daily activities both at work and home, personal interests (Oscar loved to read) and details of the things he enjoyed when not working ranging from comics and sweets he bought, to visits to the music hall. 

The Museum plans to feature the corresponding daily diary entries on the homepage of the Museum of London Docklands website and on other social media sites starting from January 1^st 2010.

A planned online archive of all diary entries and further supporting details relating to the subjects that Oscar covers in his diary will also be updated regularly. 

Oscar was 15 when he started to work in the East India Docks in 1918 ferrying messages and mail between different docks and Port of London Authority offices. Oscar would have been provided with a uniform and would be expected to look smart at all times (Oscar notes making a “boot pad” on Sunday January 5^th 1919, possibly to keep his boots clean). 

Although work days for Oscar could be arduous he still found time for fun as the start of his diary entry for Wednesday 22^nd January 1919 highlights: “got chapped hands today. Played between 12.30 and 1.30 in the sack shed”.  Oscar was also saving to buy a bicycle of his own, by giving his father a few pence at a time towards the cost. By the time the entries in the diary finish in July 1919 he had given his father 1/6d (7.5p) towards the cost.

Oscar’s diary is currently on display in the Sainsbury’s Study Centre at Museum of London Docklands.  Find out more about Oscar’s thoughts and duties daily on our website from January 1^st 2010 and follow Oscar on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/OscarKirk1919

Last week I wrote up my conclusions from the research I carried out on Museum of London (MOL) and its use of Facebook and blogs. To summarise:

• 100% of members want MOL to continue on Facebook,
• Most members would recommend MOL and MOL on Facebook to other people,
• Very few visitors were engaging with MOL through Facebook and the blog sites,
• More effort needs to be put into improving the communication on Facebook and blog to make it effective,
• MOL was not utilising Facebook or the blogs enough at the time of research and used it for information purposes only,
• It appeared that people wanted to receive information but not necessarily engage with MOL in any way other than to read emails, update alerts, and the blog entries, and
• People want to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way.

So what are we doing now to ensure we utilise these available resources in the best way possible?

I have taken the feedbacks and lessons learned from my research to ensure that more use is made of all of our social software sites and activities. Although there are resource constraints, I have been attempting to:

• Add regular Facebook status updates on the MOL Facebook fan page,
• Twitter regularly on the MOL Twitter account,
• Blog more frequently on this blog site, and
• I have been vigilantly ensuring that all comments on MOL Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and Flickr, and all tweets and Twitter messages at Museum of London is responded to.

In addition to this, I am working on a new ‘Online’ section on the Museum of London website to bring together all these activities into a central location. I am also emphasising the use of social software to my colleagues and attempting to pass on responsibilities to various departments to manage some of these tools.

We are a long way from accomplishing all that which can be accomplished with all the available social software, but slowly and surely, we are heading towards that line were our visitors are able to engage with us in their preferred platforms and we are able to say ‘yes, we are listening and we care’.

On another note, I have finally visited our Modern London Galleries currently under development, due to open in spring 2010 and I have taken many, many pictures, so watch out for my next post to find out about all the exciting developments!

At the beginning of these blog posts, I raised a number of questions about the effectiveness of social software on the Museum of London. The conclusions derived from my research are as follows:

Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?

It became obvious from my research that the Museum of London (MOL) was not losing visitors by having content sitting on other sites but was in fact, gaining more visits to MOL websites as a by product of its existence on Facebook and the existence of MOL’s blog (MyMOL). In addition, as a result of its presence on Facebook, Facebook members were making some actual visits to the Museums that they previously may not have made.

However, the advantages of having a blog and a presence on Facebook was clearly not being utilised to its full potential. I discovered that if more blog entries were made on MyMOL, with links to the MOL websites and incentives to visit events and exhibitions at MOL, more visitors would visit the MOL websites and possibly end up visiting the two MOL Museums.

Also, from the comments I received in the Facebook survey I carried out, it was apparent that MOL could promote more events and engage better with the audience by actively prompting members to not only visit the Facebook pages, but also MOL websites and any other social software sites where MOL activities were taking place.

Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?

Within the limit of my study on the MOL website and MyMOL, the measure I used for testing whether visitors were engaging with the sites proved that in actual fact, very few visitors were engaging with the Museum or the Museum blog through active comments, enquiries and feedback. This, I realise, may be incorrect to conclude as visitors could have been engaged in many ways such as using information for research and planning visits and visiting the actual Museums, but the method I used showed very little engagement on the social software sites.

On Facebook, however, the engagement level was greater in one sense, but minimal in another. It was greater in that with the response to the survey alone, it proved that a high percentage of the members were willing to engage with the MOL, however, very few members were carrying out discussion or collaborating.

So to answer this question, very few visitors were engaging with MOL through its social software sites at the time of research.

Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?

I concluded that visitors of MyMOL must find information of value as a high percentage of visitors made repeat visits. Though there was a drop in repeat visitors at the end of the reporting period for MyMOL, if the pattern of repeat visitors on MOL website was used, it was possible to see that the repeat visits would start to steadily grow, suggesting that visitors see it as a valuable source to come back to.

In addition to this, members on Facebook had generally thought the MOL’s presence on Facebook was useful, and every single member agreed that MOL should remain on Facebook, confirming that they do value it for the individual purpose for which they signed up to them, whether it was simply to keep up to date with events, or to find out about new developments at the Museums. Also, the comments were mostly positive and many members were recommending MOL and its presence on Facebook to friends and family, which was a very important factor in determining that members do find information on MOL websites and those on associated social software sites of value.

Should museums spend time pursuing the use of social software to attract new audience?

The number of visits to MyMOL in comparison to MOL website was very small, however, given that MyMOL was so new and did not have any publicity, it was still evident that the number of visits to MyMOL was increasing steadily, and the trend in visits mirrored that of the MOL website. For this reason, cultivating MyMOL would ensure that more visitors would be attracted and end up visiting MOL and MOL websites, and with promotion of MyMOL, it would be worth spending the time to attracting these new visitors.

Similarly, the number of MOL Facebook members were very small in comparison to the number of visitors to the MOL website received. However, as more effort is put into improving the communication on Facebook, more members are likely to join, and therefore, increase the traffic to MOL and its website. For this reason and for the fact that those existing members who responded to the survey valued the MOL Facebook presence and found it useful, I concluded that it would be worth spending time on attempting to engage these members and attract new audiences.

Should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

Having compared the web statistics for the MOL website with MyMOL, although the number of visits is small in comparison, they are still visits to a Museum site that holds information that belongs to the Museum and therefore, should be included in the official reporting. I could find no evidence other than the fact that for social networking sites such as Facebook, it may not be as easy to capture the visits and visitor statistics*, however, where statistics could be and are being collected, these should be reported in the same way as for all the other MOL websites.

To conclude

Museums can use social software to communicate with its audience outside of its own website, and can react quickly, efficiently and appropriately if the Museum is being discussed (Newson 2008).

The findings of my study at the time of research concludes that visitors use MyMOL and the Facebook pages for information purposes only, and MOL use social software to simply publish content. From this study, it appeared that people wanted to receive information but did not necessarily engage with the Museum in any way other than to read emails, update alerts and blog entries, and did not want to carry out conversations. They wanted to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way possible without having to visit the MOL website unless necessary.

Given this conclusion, it could be said that MOL has much to gain from having a presence on Facebook and working with social software such as blogs, to attract new audiences and new visitors to the Museums and the Museum websites. It provides MOL with different ways to disseminate information that visitors’ value and can engage with, and MOL should spend time on ensuring that the right social software is being used appropriately.

However, as Newson argued, museums can only see benefits of using social software if they change their perception of social software to properly manage and take advantage of current knowledge and trends. “In other words, the value these tools offer depends on regular contributions, networked thinking and good levels of participation” rather than the actual social software themselves, therefore social software will only be effective if MOL takes a lead on it and uses it appropriately.

Though it can be argued that my research on the effectiveness of MyMOL on MOL and MOL websites was “not a good measure”, and in fact a better method of research would have been to check for “citations/linkbacks and user comments” (Chan), the results found still proved that although MyMOL was not highly increasing traffic to MOL website at the time of this study, and possibly no traffic to the actual Museum, it still raised the profile of MOL with the thousands of visitors who regularly visited the site and encouraged visitors to recognise MOL as a brand.

The use of social software by MOL was effective to a certain extent, but could be improved. I concluded that MOL should communicate more with its audience and engage with them effectively by clearly guiding visitors to the relevant events, exhibitions and collections, ensuring that the message is openly received.

Finally, though each museum has its own niche in visitor attraction, through the findings of this research on the effectiveness of social software on MOL, and using Hubbard’s justification that “sampling is observing just some of the things in a population to learn about all of the things in a population”, as the “law applies to everything” and not just for the “examples observed” (Hubbard 2007), it can be concluded that the findings for this report could apply to other museums and their use of social software too.

* Additional notes

The inability to capture website statistics for social software sites such as Facebook is very important to note as many social software tools are hosted on external servers that do not belong to the museums and often, cannot be accessed by the museums other than through the front end as a user. This raises a number of issues that museums should address.

Firstly, the question of who does the content belongs to?  In February 2009, there were rumours that Facebook was announcing that they owned all users content, and users no longer have copyright to it. However, although Facebook has stated that all content on Facebook put up by users, still belongs to the users (Lacy), it is important to consider this.

Secondly, there are the security issue and problems of backing up data that can potentially be lost forever should anything happen to those sites or servers. Currently, the only way to back up any information on such sites is to manually copy the data and store it in an internal server.

Finally, there are the issues of not being able to measure the level of usage of the site and how much traffic it gains as museums will not have access to the web logs that contain the data used for web analytics. Without this data, museums will not be able to track the number of visits that are made to the Facebook pages and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the site on the museum and its websites, nor can it report the visitor numbers to stakeholders.

References

Chan, S. “Better museum blog metrics - is your blog really working for you and your organisation.” Weblog post. Fresh + New(er). Powerhouse Museum, 19 November 2007. Web. Accessed 6 August 2009. <http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2007/11/19/better-museum-blog-metrics-is-your-blog-really-working-for-you-and-your-organisation/>

Hubbard, D. How to measure anything: finding the value of ?intangibles? in business. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print

Lacy, S. “Facebook: You Own All Your Data. Period. (But See You at the Next Privacy Uproar.).” Weblog post. TechCrunch. 21 February 2009. Web. Accessed 28 August 2009. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/21/facebook-you-own-all-your-data-period-but-see-you-at-the-next-privacy-uproar/>

Newson, A., D. Houghton, and J. Patten. Blogging and other social media: exploiting the technology and protecting the enterprise. Gower, Ltd., 2008. Print

   By Dr James Morris 

As well as human remains, the osteology department deals with the animal bones recovered from archaeological sites, which are examined and reported upon by the two zooarchaeologists (or archaeozoologists, believe it or not a matter of some debate within the animal bone community), James Morris and Alan Pipe.

As zooarchaeologists we operate in association with many different fields and specialists. We often utilise zoological data from modern day animals enabling us to understand how their ancestors would have behaved, we also consult with other environmental archaeology specialists, such as archaeobotanists so we can get an overall picture of past environments and economies. Working in the osteology department also gives us a good opportunity to work alongside our human bone counterparts. Although we will often joke with human bone specialists that they only have to deal with one species compared to our hundreds, a lot of our methods and practises are the same and there is a great deal we learn from working beside each other. Finally and most importantly we are also archaeologists, in that our primary aim is always to investigate and shed light on humanity’s past, animal remains are merely the tools we use.

You may now be thinking to yourself, how do they do that? Well, consider how you interact with animals in your day to day life. Firstly, if you’re not vegetarian, there’s the animals you eat and use for raw materials such as leather, then the animals who are your companions and pets, the animals you work with such as horses and finally the wild animals who sometimes live alongside you unawares. Even today we have many different relationships with the animal kingdom and it is through examining these relationships that zooarchaeologists can tell us about past human societies.

The photo shows sheep/goat (it’s hard to tell the difference between the two species) metacarpals (top) and metatarsals (bottom) from medieval leather working site, the bones are often left attached to the skin during the tanning process. Photo by J. Morris  

 The primary bread and butter of zooarchaeological work is food (please forgive the pun), in that the majority of the animal remains archaeologists recover are food waste. What we are able to do is construct not only what people are eating, but how and why. By examining the remains we can tell how an animal was butchered and what parts people were eating. As with everything, different food goes in and out of fashion. Today we often eat just the prime cuts, but this was not always the case, when I was a kid I remember my mum sending me to school with tongue sandwiches (which were impossible to trade), a meat which is eaten less and less today. We also see such changes in the past; the medieval period providing a classic example. Think of a medieval aristocratic feast and a picture of stuffed piglets, swans and peacocks springs to mind, yet eventually the nature of such meals changed along with the species used. Such meals were also a far cry from the food the majority of people were eating. By examining the animal bones we can pick up such differences, which add to our knowledge not only of social status, but the way people used food as a show of wealth.

As a final point with the time of year in mind it’s worth thinking about Christmas celebrations and asking yourself, how many other times a year you eat roast turkey. Perhaps zooarchaeologists in the future will be examining what appear to be annual deposits of turkey bones in landfill sites and wondering about the activities which created them.

If you are interested in finding out more about animal bones then please visit the  International Council of Archaeozoology website

You can also find out more about James’ research at http://www.animalbones.org/