UK Museums Loans Network
Ideas, Research, Best Practice and Advice
A museum loans service is any non-profit organisation that lends real and replica historical and artistic objects and natural history specimens for educational purposes. These services are usually part of a museum service, but equally may be run as part of an educational or library organisation.
Been around for a long time or just starting? The network is a forum for all museum loans services in the UK.
We aim to:- Promote and share best practice for museum loan services in UK and internationally.
- Facilitate research into the benefits of museum loan services and the development of standardised performance indicators.
- Advise, assist and encourage new and emerging museum loan services.
- Advise, assist and encourage museum loan services under threat.
- Promote, campaign and lobby for continued recognition of the importance of loan services within museum and education sectors and regional and national government bodies.
Key objectives are to:
- Set up an e-mail list
- Develop the web site
In the long term we also hope to produce articles and conference papers, and to organise meetings and training days.
The Network will have a Steering Group of representatives drawn from a wide geographical spread of larger services. The first Steering Group comprises:
- Reading Museum Service
- Birmingham Museums
and Art Gallery
- Devon Learning Resources
- East Sussex Art and Museum Service
- National Museum and Galleries of Wales
- Wiltshire and Swindon Learning Resources
Proposed development of the site:
The site consists of contributions by all members of the steering group. We would like to add to the site over time and are extremely keen to invite contributions from loan services throughout the UK.
UK Museums Loans Network