Book Chapters by Oliver Douglas
Collections De L'Agriculture - Nouvelle Dynamique: Actes Du Colloque / Agriculture Collections - A New Dynamic: Proceedings
A series of recent projects at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, have rede... more A series of recent projects at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, have redefined how we develop and use our holdings. Research into the history of collections has emerged in parallel to reappraisals of the way we collect, structure and classify, and choose what kinds of information to record about things. This paper argues that these changes in emphasis represent a shift in how our stakeholders might come to value such artefacts in the future.
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Collecting the Contemporary / Owain Rhys and Zelda Baveystock (eds), 2014
This paper explores a recent programme of near-contemporary collecting undertaken by the Museum o... more This paper explores a recent programme of near-contemporary collecting undertaken by the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL). Supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Collecting Twentieth Century Rural Cultures project ran between 2008 and 2013. Through the acquisition of materials that built, decade by decade, a picture of the twentieth century English countryside, it was able to address several key challenges. It sought to shift the focus of acquisition activity away from simply gathering materials that were made or used in rural contexts, broadening collecting policies to incorporate representations of the countryside. Further to this it facilitated targeted acquisition and detailed exploration of how active approaches might enhance a collection that has languished for many years behind a passive reliance on donations, bequests, or transfers. This paper situates concerns that emerged in the course of this work relative to the collecting activities of the Museum’s past. In doing so it offers a vision of how, through inventive approaches to near-contemporary collecting, we can begin to revitalise and reenergise social history in museums. When it was founded in 1951 the Museum was at the forefront of contemporary collecting, favouring the salvage ethnography of Scandinavian museology. This soon gave way to dominant social historical approaches, when active fieldwork and planned collecting gave way to other concerns. The Collecting Cultures project enabled MERL to re-engage with targeted acquisition and to examine how rural museums might seek to collect in more contemporaneous, spontaneous, and reactive ways.
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Journal Papers by Oliver Douglas
Journal of Museum Ethnography, 2004
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Journal of Museum Ethnography, Dec 2009
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Journal of Museum Ethnography, 2011
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Museum History Journal, Jul 2011
This article explores three terms of reference connected to late-nineteenth century ethnographies... more This article explores three terms of reference connected to late-nineteenth century ethnographies of British vernacular life—folklore, survivals in culture, and the neo-archaic. These descriptive vocabularies came to characterize homeland material culture and each expression became entrenched in museum based discourse. The Folklore Society (FLS) made an abortive attempt to found an independent Museum of Folklore, in anticipation of which they deposited objects in the Museum of General and Local Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge. Similar artifacts were acquired by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford where, under the auspices of Edward Burnett Tylor, they were characterized as survivals from an earlier age. Similarly, Arthur Mitchell donated neo-archaic finds to the collections of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, arguing that such items exemplified the material resonance of the past in the present. This paper examines the emergence, impact, and agency of these interlinking terminologies, addressing their formative role in museological practice.
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PhD Thesis by Oliver Douglas
This thesis offers a critique of existing histories of the late-nineteenth-century British folklo... more This thesis offers a critique of existing histories of the late-nineteenth-century British folklore movement. It reworks hagiographic interpretations of homeland ethnographies of the 1890s. Recent accounts concentrate on top-down intellectual factors at the expense of bottom-up trajectories of knowledge. The success of British anthropology means that its history has tended to overwrite that of British folklore studies. The disciplinary aims of the latter never reached their full potential. This has resulted in teleological histories, favouring contemporary anthropological modes at the expense of folkloric discourse. This revised narrative places the roots of anthropological fieldwork in the materialism of eighteenth-century antiquarian endeavours, charting their progression through the proto-ethnographic methodologies of folkloric discourse, and into subsequent ethnographies.
A combination of ideas—including sociological approaches to the construction of knowledge and micro-historical approaches to historiography—give rise to an alternative way of exploring these histories, examining collections of folkloric data from the bottom-up. Artefactual evidence and its materialized equivalents—transcribed narratives, photographs, and bodily measurements—provide useful windows onto processes of disciplinary development. Social networks, hierarchical structures, and inter-class dialogues are vital to elucidating these complex webs of interconnection. Examining such factors in detail allows for the different agencies involved in the processes of folklore collection—material, human, disciplinary—to emerge and be considered together.
Collecting processes are seen to exist not only in moments of discovery or contact but to provide a bridge from the traditional knowledge of informants, through its acquisition by collecting agents, its exchange and discussion by academic thinkers, to its dissemination in contexts of publication, discussion, and display. This elucidation of the mechanics of folklore collection sheds new light on late-nineteenth-century auto-anthropology, and provides insight into the ongoing reinterpretations to which its evidences are continually subject. Together these investigations contribute towards contemporary social-scientific ideas concerning relations between peoples, materials, and knowledge.
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Conference Presentations by Oliver Douglas
This short paper summarizes different ways in which the Museum of English Rural Life has explored... more This short paper summarizes different ways in which the Museum of English Rural Life has explored the links between objects, materials and people; links between these different spheres form the focus of University of Reading research cluster that seeks to consider and examine the relationships between the lives of both people and things in the past. The paper deliberately draws on intersections with archaeological thought and seeks to bring this discussion up to the present by examining recent and ongoing project activity at the Museum, including a Designation-funded project called the 'Museum of the Intangible.'
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Introducing the main aims and expected outcomes of a major Wellcome Trust funded public engagemen... more Introducing the main aims and expected outcomes of a major Wellcome Trust funded public engagement project to University of Reading academic staff with a particular interest in research and engagement activity associated with food. This presentation was offered in conjunction with two lunchtime tours of the new displays at the Museum focussing on food-related aspects of gallery interpretation.
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This short paper introduces a major programme of capital redevelopment, redisplay, and revised pr... more This short paper introduces a major programme of capital redevelopment, redisplay, and revised programming at the Museum of English Rural Life, as supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Wellcome Trust.
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The University of Reading's Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) is currently undergoing a major c... more The University of Reading's Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) is currently undergoing a major capital redevelopment funded by the HLF and the Wellcome Trust. This is geared towards greater public engagement with audiences including local communities and families, adult learners and browsers, secondary school children and young people 18-24. The overarching goal of this scheme is to challenge preconceptions about rural life and provide meaningful connections for contemporary audiences with their own agricultural and rural heritage: their country lives. We hope to take those currently at a remove from this heritage and to bring them closer to it. This talk explores our development of gallery texts that will form a central part of the interpretive offer at the heart of these new gallery spaces, which in turn will form one principal means by which we hope to hook visitors into seeing heritage within MERL as relevant to them.
In terms of practicalities and timetables, the MERL approach would feel familiar to anyone who has developed large amounts of museum text before. The usual tensions of word counts, writing styles, and levels of detail have played out in the course of drafting and editing these texts. However, interesting things emerged as the the team devised the broad thematic shape of our new galleries and the style of interpretation that these innovative and alternative structures demanded have had a significant knock-on impact on the text that was ultimately produced.
Written interpretation developed for use alongside MERL’s redisplayed holdings has been shaped by careful examination of documentation and collections, in-house primary and secondary research, consultation with target audience forums, and guidance from specialist academic advisors and other external experts. The writing process has evolved as a negotiation between these different agents and stakeholders and the resultant text will hopefully help to hook and enthuse new audiences. A ladder of engagement model has been taken as a starting point for our redisplays and activity plans, meaning that the text and other in-gallery interpretation is intended to function as a springboard into deeper levels of future engagement.
The first part of this talk will describe the wider project approaches and aims, alterative gallery themes and structures developed, and the target audiences selected (for whom this text has been researched, developed, drafted, and edited). The second part of the talk will offer a flavour of the developmental process, taking early and formative texts used to identify an appropriate voice, through subsequent drafts, and leading up to the presentation of the condensed and edited form of some finished gallery text. The final and principal part of this talk will explore the complex and time-consuming yet vital and rewarding process of honing this text with the help of a wide range of experts and academic specialists.
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This short presentation comprised several elements. A virtual tour of the gallery spaces and stor... more This short presentation comprised several elements. A virtual tour of the gallery spaces and stores of the Museum of English Rural Life and accompanying introduction to the redevelopment scheme in which the Museum is currently involved. An outline presentation of the content and interpretive direction of the new galleries developed as part of the redisplay aspects of this scheme. Both tour and presentation were delivered online via video conferencing software.
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Book Chapters by Oliver Douglas
Journal Papers by Oliver Douglas
PhD Thesis by Oliver Douglas
A combination of ideas—including sociological approaches to the construction of knowledge and micro-historical approaches to historiography—give rise to an alternative way of exploring these histories, examining collections of folkloric data from the bottom-up. Artefactual evidence and its materialized equivalents—transcribed narratives, photographs, and bodily measurements—provide useful windows onto processes of disciplinary development. Social networks, hierarchical structures, and inter-class dialogues are vital to elucidating these complex webs of interconnection. Examining such factors in detail allows for the different agencies involved in the processes of folklore collection—material, human, disciplinary—to emerge and be considered together.
Collecting processes are seen to exist not only in moments of discovery or contact but to provide a bridge from the traditional knowledge of informants, through its acquisition by collecting agents, its exchange and discussion by academic thinkers, to its dissemination in contexts of publication, discussion, and display. This elucidation of the mechanics of folklore collection sheds new light on late-nineteenth-century auto-anthropology, and provides insight into the ongoing reinterpretations to which its evidences are continually subject. Together these investigations contribute towards contemporary social-scientific ideas concerning relations between peoples, materials, and knowledge.
Conference Presentations by Oliver Douglas
In terms of practicalities and timetables, the MERL approach would feel familiar to anyone who has developed large amounts of museum text before. The usual tensions of word counts, writing styles, and levels of detail have played out in the course of drafting and editing these texts. However, interesting things emerged as the the team devised the broad thematic shape of our new galleries and the style of interpretation that these innovative and alternative structures demanded have had a significant knock-on impact on the text that was ultimately produced.
Written interpretation developed for use alongside MERL’s redisplayed holdings has been shaped by careful examination of documentation and collections, in-house primary and secondary research, consultation with target audience forums, and guidance from specialist academic advisors and other external experts. The writing process has evolved as a negotiation between these different agents and stakeholders and the resultant text will hopefully help to hook and enthuse new audiences. A ladder of engagement model has been taken as a starting point for our redisplays and activity plans, meaning that the text and other in-gallery interpretation is intended to function as a springboard into deeper levels of future engagement.
The first part of this talk will describe the wider project approaches and aims, alterative gallery themes and structures developed, and the target audiences selected (for whom this text has been researched, developed, drafted, and edited). The second part of the talk will offer a flavour of the developmental process, taking early and formative texts used to identify an appropriate voice, through subsequent drafts, and leading up to the presentation of the condensed and edited form of some finished gallery text. The final and principal part of this talk will explore the complex and time-consuming yet vital and rewarding process of honing this text with the help of a wide range of experts and academic specialists.
A combination of ideas—including sociological approaches to the construction of knowledge and micro-historical approaches to historiography—give rise to an alternative way of exploring these histories, examining collections of folkloric data from the bottom-up. Artefactual evidence and its materialized equivalents—transcribed narratives, photographs, and bodily measurements—provide useful windows onto processes of disciplinary development. Social networks, hierarchical structures, and inter-class dialogues are vital to elucidating these complex webs of interconnection. Examining such factors in detail allows for the different agencies involved in the processes of folklore collection—material, human, disciplinary—to emerge and be considered together.
Collecting processes are seen to exist not only in moments of discovery or contact but to provide a bridge from the traditional knowledge of informants, through its acquisition by collecting agents, its exchange and discussion by academic thinkers, to its dissemination in contexts of publication, discussion, and display. This elucidation of the mechanics of folklore collection sheds new light on late-nineteenth-century auto-anthropology, and provides insight into the ongoing reinterpretations to which its evidences are continually subject. Together these investigations contribute towards contemporary social-scientific ideas concerning relations between peoples, materials, and knowledge.
In terms of practicalities and timetables, the MERL approach would feel familiar to anyone who has developed large amounts of museum text before. The usual tensions of word counts, writing styles, and levels of detail have played out in the course of drafting and editing these texts. However, interesting things emerged as the the team devised the broad thematic shape of our new galleries and the style of interpretation that these innovative and alternative structures demanded have had a significant knock-on impact on the text that was ultimately produced.
Written interpretation developed for use alongside MERL’s redisplayed holdings has been shaped by careful examination of documentation and collections, in-house primary and secondary research, consultation with target audience forums, and guidance from specialist academic advisors and other external experts. The writing process has evolved as a negotiation between these different agents and stakeholders and the resultant text will hopefully help to hook and enthuse new audiences. A ladder of engagement model has been taken as a starting point for our redisplays and activity plans, meaning that the text and other in-gallery interpretation is intended to function as a springboard into deeper levels of future engagement.
The first part of this talk will describe the wider project approaches and aims, alterative gallery themes and structures developed, and the target audiences selected (for whom this text has been researched, developed, drafted, and edited). The second part of the talk will offer a flavour of the developmental process, taking early and formative texts used to identify an appropriate voice, through subsequent drafts, and leading up to the presentation of the condensed and edited form of some finished gallery text. The final and principal part of this talk will explore the complex and time-consuming yet vital and rewarding process of honing this text with the help of a wide range of experts and academic specialists.
The main output of the project has been a web-based mapping resource, using the website Historypin, which provides a platform for source communities to engage with objects in the Museum’s collections. This resource fundamentally changes the way that information on MERL database can be accessed by the public, and this presentation will consider its potential to transform the ability of source communities to not only access but also share and shape Museum knowledge about collections. The presentation will conclude with experiences drawn from the project for considering the potential and also practical limitations of new technologies for these aims."