Documentation Detectives: Transcribing Accession Registers

Who are BMT?

We are Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT), a charitable trust, and the largest civic museums service in the United Kingdom, based in the West Midlands region of England. Birmingham is the second largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of around 1.2million. We care for and share the city’s collection of around 1 million objects and artworks across nine extraordinary museums and historic properties, on behalf of Birmingham City Council and the people of Birmingham. We bring people’s stories to life and offer a glimpse into Birmingham’s past through our collections.

Since the first Museum and Art Gallery’s opening in 1885, the collection was designed to provide the city’s residents, including the many industrial workers, with inspiration, education, and enjoyment. Today Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, along with Thinktank Science Museum, Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Aston Hall, Blakesley Hall, Sarehole Mill, Soho House, Weoley Castle and the Museum Collection Centre, are all managed by BMT with each site offering different services and experiences to the public.

Why are we doing this project?

We at the Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT) are embarking on an ambitious project to get our historic documentation records updated and more accessible to the public as part of our Dynamic Collections project and we want you to be a part of this process. Dynamic Collections is a 10-year programme aimed at transforming the documentation and digital accessibility of our collections. By participating, you will be helping us to preserve our history, learn about our collections, and share our story. Your contributions will have a long-term impact on our ability to serve communities, helping us to create lasting connections where everyone feels valued.

Most museums have a documentation backlog and ours is no exception. Some information in our paper accession registers is not currently on our central database and, therefore, isn’t digitally accessible. This makes it more difficult and time consuming for museum staff to search for the information they’re looking for, and means the information is outright inaccessible to the public.

As the first activity in our Dynamic Collections project, Documentation Detectives aims to transcribe our paper registers so they can be added to our collections management database and, in future, be made publicly available on a digital platform. We have identified this as a priority to better connect with communities, unlocking our collections and Birmingham’s heritage.

Collections

Rather than be split between the various sites comprising BMT, these accession records are organised by collection type. These collections types include antiquities (e.g. archaeology), applied arts (clothing, jewelry, etc.), fine art (paintings, etc.), topographical views (maps, etc.), natural and industrial sciences, and social history (i.e. local Birmingham/UK objects from approximately 19th century onward).

When the museum started, all collections were recorded together in one accession register. Over time, they gradually split into separate books for each category which were put together by the curators responsible for each collection type. As a result, there can be a lot of variety in how different accession registers are written and organised. Some books contain multiple years. Other times one year's worth of collecting can fill multiple books.

Over 36,000 pages across 258 registers have been scanned so far. These pages will then be cropped and separated into the individual object records which you will be able to transcribe on this Zooniverse project. This is done both to help assign the transcriptions to the correct object number metadata as well as to remove sensitive GDPR data which cannot be included. The up-to-date object number for each record is listed as the internal_id in the Zooniverse subject info.

Find out more about our collection at our Website (https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/collection).

Content Note

Please note that, due to the age and colonial context of some collections, you may encounter object records which contain offensive and outdated terms. Their presence does not represent our current practises, beliefs, and values regarding the acquisition of objects or the language we use to interpret them. It is nonetheless important that we transcribe this data as it was originally written to clearly flag it in our databases. Their inclusion in this project also reflects our aims to improve transparency around our collections. For more information on our current practises, please refer to our collections development policy (https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/about/policies-plans-and-reports).

If you encounter discriminatory language you are uncomfortable with, do not feel pressured to continue transcribing them. If you wish to move to another record by refreshing the webpage, please feel free to do so. If you would like to discuss any terms you encounter, you can do this using the “Talk” function here on Zooniverse or you can email us directly at BMTCollections@birminghammuseums.org.uk.

We value your wellbeing and are committed to making our records more accessible to all through this project. We will take anything raised seriously and are grateful for your help. Thank you for your support as we work to improve our database and record keeping standards.