Understanding use: objects in museums of science and technology

Abstract

"This volume proposes a way of thinking, and of developing practice, around three varieties of the use of science and technology museum objects: first, the ways that machines, instruments and equipment were used in their pre-museum 'lives' (which use provides the most frequent reason for their acquisition); second, the ways in which museum staff employ objects in their 'museum lives', when they are members of collections. Thirdly there is also the possibility of reconceptualizing museum visitors as users of collections and displays, in which guise visitors would also have something in common with the objects' original users and also with the curators of the middle category. We suggest that thinking of museum objects in these ways, in terms of use, could constitute a coherent approach to doing museum work that would enrich the wider project of science and technology museums."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents

Capturing uses -- How does that work? The audiovisual documentation of craft practice by the Competence Centre for Crafts and Technology in the LWL Open-Air Museum Hagen and the context of its use / by Lisa Maubach -- Exhibiting work: from industrial arts to the anthropology of technology / by Arnaud Dubois -- In my father's gestures: an autobiographical essay / by Yves Winkin -- Reconstructing uses -- The recreation of nineteenth-century photomechanical processes to aid twenty-first century research and development / by Stephen Hoskins -- Bringing museum objects to life: documenting surgical practices through use / by Roger Kneebone -- Reconstructing knowledge in the museum: using the handloom as technology / by Ellen Harlizius-Klück and Annapurna Mamidipudi -- Museum uses -- On the shelf: unused objects in museum collections / by Alison Boyle -- Intangible heritage, science, and identity: national narratives and the documentation of science in practice / by Simona Casonato -- Should we look for incorporated technical gestures in technical collections? the case of the railway collection at the Musée des Arts et Métiers / by Lionel Dufaux -- Visitors as users -- The immaterial turn? how historians of science and technology use material culture / by Samuel J. M. M. Alberti, Alison Boyle, James Inglis, and Louis Volkmer.