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Between April and August 2019, staff at Charles Beagrie Ltd had the privilege of working on a digital preservation consultancy for the Science Museums Group, one of the UK’s key groups of national museums.

With five museums and a collections centre around the UK, the Science Museum Group consists of the Science Museum in London, National Railway Museum in York, National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, Locomotion in County Durham, the Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, and the National Collections Centre in Wroughton.

Over several decades, the Group’s digitization programme has built up significant digital collections and the museums are increasingly having to manage born-digital content, both internally generated and acquired.

SMG recognised that digital preservation had become business critical and was committed to implementing best practice for managing its collection and other digital assets. It commissioned a digital preservation consultancy from us to:

• Advise on SMG’s production of a Digital Asset Register.
• Assess levels of digital preservation for archive collection and corporate information at the National  Railway Museum (NRM) prior to applying for archive service accreditation for NRM.
• Produce a digital preservation gap analysis across SMG as a whole to highlight key risks, opportunities, and priorities for the organisation. This would be used by SMG to develop its digital preservation strategy and the business case for resourcing it.

Our work was completed in August 2019. It has been gratifying subsequently to see the progress that has been made by SMG:

• The National Railway Museum achieved its archive service accreditation in the second half of last year.
• The recommendations in our report were accepted by the senior management group. The priority recommendations have started to be implemented this year including:
  • SMG has joined the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) as an associate member.
  • SMG is advertising for the post of a digital preservation manager.

It has been great to see SMG join the DPC and increase the membership representation from the museum sector. We are sure that like other members, it will benefit from the sharing of experience, skills, and expertise that this brings.

The new digital preservation manager post is also a key opportunity to make a difference within a major national organisation. Our experience of working with SMG staff was extremely positive and the work environment is inspiring. Do consider applying if the job is of interest. The closing date for applications is 12th October.

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