Flanders: VLIR Working Group Academic Heritage
The Working Group Academic Heritage is a collaboration between five universities in Flanders. This Working Group, a continuation of the Interuniversity Platform for Academic Heritage (founded in 2007), met for the first time in 2019. Since then representatives of the University of Antwerp, the Free University of Brussels, Ghent University, Hasselt University and KU Leuven regularly meet to discuss current affairs. In 2021, the Institute for Tropical Medicine joined the Working Group.
The goals of the Working Group are to:
- Gain access to Flemish project fundings
- Respond to policy changes of the Flemish government
- Make university boards aware of the necessity of professional policies on academic heritage
- Gain and exchange expertise on academic heritage in Flanders
- Make academic collections known beyond their limited niches
The publication ‘Balans en Perspectief’ (State of Affairs and Perspectives) by the Interuniversity Platform, which focused on the collections kept at each university, in 2014, proved a stepping stone for the 2020 publication ‘Tot Nut van het Algemeen’ (For the Benefit of the General Public) by the recently founded Working Group. This new state of affairs shifted its focus to dealing with academic heritage in universities, aiming at attention from the Flemish government to grant access to project fundings. This first goal was reached in 2021 when the Cultural Heritage Decree of December 23, 2021 explicitly mentioned academic heritage collections receptive to project fundings.
Three sub-working groups to the Working Group were created:
- Sub-working group Collection Registration
- Sub-working group Information and Records Management
- Sub-working group Meetings with the Dutch Foundation for Academic Heritage
For more information see: https://vlir.be/publicaties/academisch-erfgoed-in-vlaanderen/
Contact: Aurora Geerts (VLIR – Secretary WG Academic Heritage): aurora.geerts@vlir.be
Germany: Network of University Collections
German universities hold more than 800 scientific collections with a wide variety of objects from almost all disciplines. They form a fundamental basis for research and teaching and are an important part of the academic heritage. In order to improve the visibility of the collections and to fully explore their potential, collection professionals from universities all over Germany have been working together for several years. Since 2010, the network has organised annual conferences.
As a result, the national coordination centre for university collections was established in 2012, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The centre supports university collections as infrastructures for research and teaching, provides location- and discipline-independent assistance, and thus enables the collections to make coordinated conceptual decisions. A digital platform offers comprehensive information on scientific collections and their objects to make the collections readily available for research, teaching and education.
Homepage: http://wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de
Contact: Martin Stricker, Coordination office for scientific university collections in Germany
martin.stricker@hu-berlin.de
Poland: Association of University Museums in Poland
The Association of University Museums in Poland has completed its project “Scientific Heritage. University Collections and the Development of Local Communities.”
One of the key components of the project was the production of fifty documentary films showcasing Poland’s academic heritage. Since 2023, the film crew has visited university museums and collections across the country. The films were shot in Poland – City: Białystok, Gdańsk, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź, Opole, Poznań, Warsaw, and Wrocław.
You can watch the films on the online platform: https://platforma.muzeauczelniane.pl/en/museums/
The project “Heritage of Science. University Collections and Community Development” makes the public aware of the importance of the Polish history of science and academic heritage as an important determinant of national identity and national heritage. The project was an excellent opportunity to learn about the study of Polish national heritage and profiles of outstanding Poles, including their scientific achievements (their achievements, scientific works, discoveries).
The project was co-financed by the Polish State Budget under the Science for Society – Popularization of Science and Promotion of Sport program of the Minister of Education and Science.
Website: https://muzeauczelniane.pl
Contact: Marta Piszczatowska, PhD; Vice President, Association of University Museums; Marta.Piszczatowska@adm.uw.edu.pl
Portugal: Network of University Museums and Collections
Although not formally constituted, the Portuguese network of university museums and collections has been actively engaged in working together in specific thematic projects for many years – for example GBIF Portugal, NATCOL (the Portuguese network of natural history museums) and the Thesaurus Network, which is developing, in collaboration with Brazil, a thesaurus of scientific instruments in Portuguese.
There are 12 public universities in Portugal and all have collections. However, cultural and scientific heritage is mostly concentrated at the universities of Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra.
In 2013, the Universities of Lisbon, Coimbra and Porto, together with the Tropical Research Institute, have submitted an application to be come a national research infrastructure – PRISC, the Portuguese Research Infrastructure of Scientific Collections.
Contact: Marta C. Lourenço, National Museum of Natural History and Science, University of Lisbon, mclourenco@museus.ul.pt
Netherlands: SAE – The Dutch Foundation for Academic Heritage
SAE is a network in which the following Dutch Universities participate:
- The University of Amsterdam
- The technical University of Delft
- The Technical University of Eindhoven
- The University of Groningen
- Leiden University
- Maastricht University
- Radboud University Nijmegen
- Tilburg University
- VU University Amsterdam
- Utrecht University
- Wageningen UR
- And in which Museum Boerhaave (on the history of science) participates as an associate member.
The Foundation forms a network for collection keepers at the universities, it looks for funding for national projects and it promotes the collections within and outside the Universities.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland: University Museums Group (UMG)
The University Museums Group (UMG) supports and advocates for the university museum sector in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. University museums in Scotland have their own organisation, UMIS, which works closely with UMG.
There are around a 100 university museums in the UK regularly accessible to the public, with a further 300 or more that are used mainly for academic research and teaching. UMG is a membership organisation, open to HE institutions with responsibility for museums, galleries or collections and individuals interested in furthering the work of UMG.
UMG provides a forum for communication and the dissemination of good practice. In advocating for the university museum sector, UMG promotes the role of university museums, galleries and collections in research and HE teaching and the importance of their contribution to widening participation and public engagement.
Contact: Kate Arnold-Forster, University Museums and Special Collections Services, Reading University, k.arnold-forster@reading.ac.uk
Scotland: University Museums in Scotland (UMIS)
Scotland’s university museums care for over 1.9 million items, including 32% of the nation’s science history, 31% of its coins & medals, 24% of fine art, 20% of natural science, and 18% of world culture. Collections held by five of our members, including the entire holdings of the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow, are Recognised as nationally important by the Scottish Government. Together, in 2012-13 the museums responded to over 3,500 research requests, while over 4000 students who took part in classes involving the museums. Our work with the wider public attracted over 300,000 visits to the museums, with almost 20,000 people taking part in a wide range of events, activities for schools and outreach activities.
University Museums in Scotland (UMIS) draws together the museums of Universities of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow School of Art, Heriot Watt University, Robert Gordon University and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. A collaborative project supported by the Scottish Funding Council has created an online portal to electronic records of the collections of member institutions, which is available on the UMIS website at www.umis.ac.uk.
Contact: Neil Curtis, King’s Museum,University of Aberdeen, neil.curtis@abdn.ac.uk