“This sensational approach has the potential to attract and meaningfully support people with a range of disabilities and access needs.”
Jim Ranahan, Archivist
An archivist and museum specialist from Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) collaborated to review their respective approaches to cataloguing, access and descriptive practice.
SBT runs an integrated collections service across its museum, library and archive. They were approached by The Sensational Museum with an offer to support their public engagement, specifically exhibitions and cataloguing activities.
The Sensational Museum, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, promotes the importance of working sensorially, placing disability at the centre of collections practice by challenging traditional reliance on the sense of sight for access models.
SBT’s archive collections department had already trialled inclusive cataloguing with a focus on hidden histories and the ways historic cataloguing practice often presents collections in outdated or offensive terms.
Jim Ranahan, Archivist, and Paul Taylor, Museum Specialist, took the opportunity to learn from The Sensational Museum and started to consider how they might incorporate a sensational approach into their inclusive cataloguing.
Jim and Paul were challenged to ‘unlearn’ certain principles and consider the experience of users more when cataloguing collections. Jim’s archivist training had promoted a model of concise, factual descriptions for collections, but this approach often fails to capture the richness of an item.
For example, a typical description of a letter might mention the writer, the intended recipient, the date and the subject but Additional consideration of ancillary subjects, greetings, sign offs and references to world events can illuminate crucial details and draw users to content they might not have otherwise engaged with.
Similarly, greater levels of detail in a description can support those with visual impairments to engage with materials more easily. Jim and Paul welcomed Dr Sophie Vohra, Research Associate for The Sensational Museum, to Stratford-upon-Avon for a facilitated workshop, focusing on specific items in the context of sensational cataloguing. They experienced a ‘light bulb’ moment when considering a photographic print of Marie Corelli, a Victorian novelist and Stratford resident, and the manuscript of Sorrows of Satan, her bestselling 1895 novel.
Vohra encouraged them to move beyond focusing on the items themselves and consider both the process of creating them and the environments in which Corelli was living and working.
For instance, the birdcage in the background of the print would be a constant source of noise and smell, and a visual stimulus, as Corelli wrote her manuscripts. They also considered what her emotional response to caged birds might be.
Jim and Paul are now looking to produce templates for colleagues to work from when cataloguing. Their aim is to embed a sensational approach into existing frameworks so they can implement positive change, while still ensuring necessary targets and time frames are kept to.
In the long term, SBT want to achieve worldwide reach with their online catalogues. They hope the sensational approach, in conjunction with inclusive cataloguing, could deliver higher levels of impact and engagement to a worldwide audience.