Your evaluation feedback is very important to us. And, if you come across any bugs, do send us an email or leave a comment on this blog. Please, include the search url that caused the error or a sequence of steps that resulted in error.

Julia Fernee, on behalf of the Museum of London Web Team

]]> http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/alpha-release-of-the-laarc-search-api-is-live/feed/ http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/alpha-release-of-the-laarc-search-api-is-live/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MuseumOfLondon/~3/AVZPAt4Sc7A/ http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/laarc-vip4-week-5/#comments Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:30:56 +0000 Adam Corsini http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/laarc-vip4-week-5/ Week 5: Registered Finds in the morning…

That was the set up this week as we almost reach the half way point of this project. Monday’s team started the day with the registered finds from Baynard House, Queen Victoria St, (MM74). All the material from the site was checked for good packaging and updated as appropriate as well as all the finds cards, which volunteers updated the location on. They then began the next site, Bain Dawes House, Minories (MN74) and completed all the finds from this site too! An excellent amount of work was achieved - almost 300 finds checked off in one morning.

Tuesday’s team, also did a fantastic job as they started updating material from one of the most important sites in LAARC, New Fresh Wharf (NFW74). Included in its archive were amazing examples of Roman wooden writing tablets that had survived due to the site’s water logged conditions and its proximity to the Thames. The site also produced some fantastic clay Venus figurines and excellent stamped ceramics.

…General Finds in the afternoon

Both Monday and Tuesday’s volunteers worked on general finds from Harp Lane (HL74), Monday’s team finishing off the pottery and starting the building material, which Tuesday’s team completed.

Wednesday’s team from the U3A, also worked on general finds this week as their session focused on pottery from Shoreditch Park (NNR05). Previously, mixed pottery styles were altogether, bagged up by context, but the contexts not in one flowing sequence within the boxes. By the end of the day, different wares and styles had been separated and everything was back in the boxes, organised by their context. A huge achievement.

No action this week on Thursday, but despite the lack of volunteers, Glynn and Adam made the most of the time and started to rebox the updated material, to see if any space can be saved. So far, VIP4 has reduced the number of registered finds boxes by 6 and we think the general finds will have an extra shelf full of space by the end of the 10 weeks!

For more photos visit Flickr

In today’s post, I will explain some of the methodology I used to answer the set of questions I identified at the start of my research to help me measure the effectiveness of the Museum of London blog (this site referred to as MyMOL) on the Museum of London website. These questions can be seen in my first blog post on this subject.

Primary research method for analysing effectiveness of Museum blog (MyMOL)

First method: use of web analytics

I used the website logs to analyse and compare the patterns in visit and visitor numbers of the Museum of London website with that of MyMOL. The web statistics gathered, analysed and compared were for the duration of one year (1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009). This period of time allowed for patterns to emerge, and correlations between the sites to be discerned, if any.

The web statistics gathered for each site were the:

• number of unique visits,
• number of unique page views,
• number of unique visitors,
• number of repeat visitors,
• number of new visitors,
• average duration of visits, and
• number of referrals made between sites

(Terminologies above will be described in greater details in the research findings.)

To ensure website statistics gathered were comparative for the Museum of London website and MyMOL, I used statistics from Google Analytics for both.

The percentage of new and repeat visitors and the duration of visits were used to demonstrate how engaged visitors were with each site and its content, which also provided an insight into how valuable visitors found the information (though these values have limitations - see ‘Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics’ below for more on this).

To help answer the question of whether MyMOL was attracting new audience and encouraging more visits and engagement with the Museum of London website, or whether it was only taking visitors away from it, I looked at any referrals that resulted in visits made from the Museum of London website to MyMOL, and from MyMOL to the Museum of London website, for the same period of time.

Second method: Museum of London website emails and MyMOL blog comments

The second research method I used for finding out how engaged visitors were with the Museum of London website and MyMOL, was to compare the number of enquiries that come through the Museum of London website with the number of comments made on MyMOL blog entries for the duration of the year.

As it was difficult to track every single enquiry that came via the website due to the fact that email addresses are explicitly published on all Museum of London websites and offline publications, I only counted enquiries submitted to the info@museumoflondon.org.uk email, which is the generic email address for all web enquiries, including emails via the contact forms on Museum of London website.

I calculated the number of enquiries received with number of visits made to Museum of London website to arrive at an average number of enquiries per visit, per month.

To compare this with MyMOL, I looked at the number of comments made to blog entries and calculated the average number of comments per visit, per month.

This indicated how engaged visitors were with the sites, both individually, as well as in comparison with each other.

Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics

Web Analytics is the statistical measure of a visitor’s journey through websites and is described as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage” (Web Analytics Association 2009).

Canadian Heritage Information Network claims that success of a website is “determined by its usage”. Web analytics helps measure this usage by enabling site managers to gather information about where visitors come from, what pages they view and how long they stay on the site. Web analytics also enable site managers to find out how many visitors are visiting the site over a period of time and if those visitors make repeat visits.

However, whilst this is true, there are problems with how the information is gathered in the logs for analysis. For example, visits and visitor numbers are not accurate. “Lots of tools use IP address to assign visitor status, but when a customer is using an ISP such as AOL they are on a dynamic IP. This means that if they come to your site today on IP ‘A’, tomorrow they might come on IP ‘B’. This would be tracked as 2 visitors each with 1 visit, even though it was really 1 visitor with 2 visits” (Kyrnin 2009). On the other hand, “some visitors may use more than one computer on a given day” and “more than one visitor may use the same computer” but it all appears “as one unique visitor” (Dash 2006). In addition, if cookies are used to track visits and visitors, the result is compromised as many people delete cookies or refuse to accept them (Kyrnin 2009).

Page views can also be misleading as people may see information on other sites instead of the original website, and so pages will not be counted. Also, the duration of visits could show up as longer then is true if visitors look at one site but keep open the browser for another site, to which they come back to after a length of time. On the other hand, if visitors view only one page, duration of time will not be logged at all.

There is also an assumption that processes for measurements “relate to an action by a human visitor”(Web Analytics Association’s Web Analytics Definitions). However, sometimes website crawlers visit websites to index pages for search engines. Some web analytic software includes these visits, whereas Google Analytics excludes them, which gives a more accurate result. However, if JavaScript is turned off on a person’s browser, Google Analytics will not be able to gather any data for any visits from that browser, thus decreasing the visitor and visit numbers, although switching off JavaScript is not a common occurrence.

Even with the recognised limitations of web analytics, other then carrying out intensive web surveys (which has limitations of its own), using the only means currently available to measure the success of a site, is still very strong. As the limitations apply to both the Museum of London website and MyMOL web statistics, and as both analysis are done using Google Analytics, I thought the results will balance against each other and as long as I am flexible and take into account these limitations, the information will still prove to be valuable.

References

Canadian Heritage Information Network. “Web Analytics ? Measuring for Success.” Canadian Heritage Information Network. 15 January 2009. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Web_Analytics/index.html>

Dash, R.K. “What Is Web Analytics? Web Metrics?” Weblog post. Chameleon TechnoBabble. 26 April 2006. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chameleonintegration.com/2006/04/26/what-is-web-analytics-web-metrics/>

Kyrnin, J. “What Web Analytics Can be Tracked: An Overview of Metrics That Can Be Tracked.” About.com. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://webdesign.about.com/od/analytics/a/what_can_track.htm>

Web Analytics Association. (a) “About Web Analytics Association.” Web Analytics Association. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/aboutus/>

Web Analytics Association. (b) “Web Analytics Definitions.” Web Analytics Association. 22 September. 2008. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA_Web_Analytics_Definitions_20080922_For_Public_Comment.pdf> p.7

Monday’s team were all present and divided themselves into two teams to tackle the registered finds from the Ludgate Hill site excavated in 1974 (LH74). An abundance of stone hones were found on the site and prior to Monday had all been assigned individual registered finds numbers but had been bundled altogether in large bags making it extremely time consuming to find any particular one. So the volunteers very patiently separated them out and ordered them, before repacking them into more managable, accessible bags, with the hones laid out in order. In addition ceramic, bone and glass finds were checked off, included paw print tiles, glass vessels and even some hair and food samples!

Tuesday’s volunteers made a triumphant return after illnesses reduced numbers last week. In contrast to Monday, the whole team worked on general finds, mainly animal bone and pottery  from Harp Lane (HL74) All the animal bone from the site was processed and relabeled and several boxes of pottery were tackled also.

No action on Wednesday as the U3A/Mossbourne Academy team of 13 stopped for half term break. Adam and Glynn took the opportunity to rebox and update the digital records for the sites worked on so far during VIP4. The “Wednesday’s” return next week to start the general finds from Shoreditch Park (NNR05)

Only 1 volunteer this week from Thursday’s team and he worked on a registered finds from Baynards House (MM74) in the morning, continuing with general finds from Harp Lane (HL74) after lunch.

The three workshops this week started with Jackie Keily’s Leather talk on Monday, followed by Geoff Egan’s metal finds handling session on Tuesday and were completed by Jacqui Pearce’s Clay Tobacco Pipe workshop on Thursday.

 So far so good as we’re on track to complete our targets as we reach next week’s half way point! To view other photos from week 4 and previous weeks visit our Flickr site

16^th century shoe as worn on the stage of the Rose Theatre 

This shoe was recovered from the Rose Theatre site on the Bankside of the Thames in the late 1980’s by Museum of London Archaeology and is believed to have been worn during performances undertaken on this famous 16^th century theatrical stage. The Rose was one of two key playhouses of Tudor London, the other being The Globe. The Rose was built in 1587, predating the building of its rival by 12 years.  The timbers used to construct The Globe were themselves taken from The Theatre, in Shoreditch, where Shakespeare’s first plays were performed.  The foundations of The Theatre were recently uncovered by Museum of London archaeologists.

The Rose Theatre has long been associated with the works of Christopher Marlowe, with the first performances of plays such as the Massacre at Paris believed to have been undertaken there, but Shakespeare’s also used the theatre. Performances of Henry VI and Titus Andronicus are believed to have graced the Rose’s stage in the early 1590’s.

The shoe is one of many remarkable finds that have allowed Museum of London archaeologists to piece together the story of London’s Elizabethan playhouses. The shoe has a high ‘vamp’ or upper and the pink zig-zagged patterning can still be seen. The throat of the shoe is stitched with delicately holed and decorated scallops. The pressures on actors at the time are highlighted by the hole at the toe end - which was most likely to have been deliberately cut to accommodate a painful bunion.  

This shoe, along with three others from the Museum’s collections worn by later prominent Shakespearean actors, will be on display in the foyer of Museum of London Docklands from late November. The shoes will be surrounded by hazelnut shells found at the Elizabethan sites – an historical equivalent of cinema popcorn today. Dress pins, probably dropped during costume changes will also be on show.The display accompaniesMuseum of London Archaeology’s publication of The Rose and The Globe: Playhouses of Shakespeare’s Bankside, Southwark, the definitive book on the archaeology of these famous Elizabethan playhouses.

As part of my research, I had emailed the top ten London museums (according to UKguide.org, see below for list) and received a response for my questions. According to the responses I got back and the research I carried out on the web, out of the ten museums (of which, Museum of London is one), four museums had a blog site or were about to launch a blog site, while the remaining six were exploring the possibility of creating one. In addition, out of the ten museums, nine already had a presence on Facebook.

I also came across the results of a questionnaire of 270 managers in cultural institutions from across the world carried out by Communicating the Museum at a conference in June 2009. It showed that 61% of these managers had a high knowledge of social networking despite 32% having no affiliation with any social networks themselves. It was also discovered that more institutions intended to move into social media, though a majority of cultural institutions were still using their websites for most communications and were not using social software tools at all. Remarkably, however, where cultural organisations did use any social software, the most popular tool used was Facebook to promote events and organisation brands.

These are just a few general findings that the student part of me (I was studying for my Masters at UCL and this research was for a dissertation – see my last post for more information) tried to be impartial about but the employee part of me found exceedingly interesting. The employee in me was also happy with the conclusion reached by Freshminds who carried out research on behalf of the DCMS, that using existing social networks can “open doors for cultural organisations trying to attract new, more diverse audiences”, and felt spurred on to do further research.

My next post will outline the methodology I used to research the impact of the Museum of London blog site on the main Museum of London website, so do check back.

Top ten London Museums

“London Museum Guide” on Ukguide.org Says that the top ten museums in London are:

• British Museum,
• Science Museum,
• Tate Gallery,
• Victoria & Albert Museum,
• National Gallery,
• Imperial War Museum,
• Natural History Museum,
• National Maritime Museum,
• London Transport Museum,
• Museum of London.

Updated 9 November 2009:

Communicating the Museum, Results of the Questionnaire: Digital Mix PDF of presentation slides can be found at www.agendacom.com/Resultats-Questionnaire-Digital-Mix.html

It is 22nd September 2009 and I am standing, with my extended family, outside the Alcaldia Municipal, the Mayor’s office, in La Vega, Colombia. We are all gathered with an official representative of the town, Snr Marco Antonio Herrera, who will take us to collect a sample of clay from a site nearby the picturesque Laguna de El Tabacal.

The Laguna de Tabacal is now the centre piece of a nature reserve park, situated about 7 kilometres from the town, approached by a long winding road among the surrounding mountains. It is in an area of natural beauty with its wildlife and exotic vegetation; all for visitors to enjoy. There are many legends and myths told of the Laguna; said to have been formed by a shining light descending from the sky and was once a ceremonial meeting place for the Panche, a pre-Colombian group of nomadic Indians. Here, they worshipped their chiefs showering them with gifts of gold and where, beneath the waters, a golden headed serpent was supposed to dwell.

On the lake, today is an island once called ‘una isla flotante’, or a floating island, which was believed to move according to the hour of the day. Sadly, this no longer happens due to the dense vegetation now found growing over the island.

A short walking distance, outside of the reserve, we were taken to a secure spot along the roadside, where we could safely remove our sample of clay. Without much difficulty, we managed to extract the clay from alluvial deposits, found all over the area and which had been laid down many millions of years ago.

The next journey was for me to fly home with the sample in my rucksack. This did not prove too difficult by having the necessary official documentation beforehand given to me, with greatest thanks, by the Mayor of La Vega .Obviously, while passing through the various customs checks, there were the constant raising of eyebrows from the custom officials, three times leaving Colombia and once leaving France, I eventually arrived with the package safely in Great Britain.

The final destination of our sample was for the ‘Clay from around the World’ project designed by Julia Rowntree and Duncan Hooson in Deptford, London. It will be part of a very welcome addition to the collection of clays from all over the world that are to be assembled in London to mark the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.

Steve Tucker, LAARC Curator

[La Laguna de El Tabacal: Co-ordinates 5 - 0 - 38.77 N / 74 - 20 -11.17 W, 1250m (4100 feet) above sea level, Temperature 23C]

More work continued on both general and registered finds this week as we updated several site archives from 1974’s excavations. Starting on Saturday, our two volunteers worked on finds from two sites whose objects had been amalgamated for publication; Bonded Warehouse, Montague House (BWMC74) & Hibernia Chambers, Montague Close (HC74). Finds included some impressive Roman stamped ceramics, coins and bone hairpins.

On Monday, three volunteers worked on registered finds from a new site, Harp Lane (HL74), starting with copper, iron, stone and ceramic artifacts. The other two volunteers that day continued with the pottery from the general finds project’s first site, Hibernia Chambers (HC74), which included several nice medieval pots. The day ended with a brief visit to our ceramics and glass store to take a look at medieval tiles and pots.

Tuesday’s volunteers started with general finds, finishing off the pottery from HC74 and repacking the entire amount of building material from the site. The afternoon was spent finishing off the ceramic, charcoal, wood and bone objects from Harp Lane (HL74). They then started checking the abundance of Roman coins from The Highway, E1 (LD74) This day also ended with a brief visit to the ceramics and glass store where we looked at complete building material examples as well as medieval pottery.

Wednesday’s volunteers from the University of 3rd Age and Mossbourne Academy tackled the iron registered finds from their site, Shoreditch Park (NNR05). Four boxes of iron were packed followed by the one box of copper left over from last week. For more information about their session visit their wiki site by clicking here.

Thursday’s volunteers repacked a whole site’s general finds in the morning - Canvin Street, Hammersmith (CVS74); pottery, building material, glass and tobacco pipe, were all sorted out, rebagged and reboxed. Certain objects were identified as registered finds including the metal printing plates used to print the site’s publication. These artifacts were processed in the afternoon along with the rest of the roman coins from The Highway, E1 (LD74)

To view more photos from our project visit our FLICKR site

After starting his career as a Chemist Bill was then drawn to the fascinating world of skeletons and after adding osteological qualifications to his chemistry bow he started work as a freelance osteoarchaeologist. In this capacity in 1988 he analysed the skeletal material from medieval St Nicholas Shambles that subsequently led to the first of many publications. Not having looked back since he went on to work for Museum of London Specialist Services (MoLSS), Museum of London Archaeological Services (MoLAS) and with the establishment of the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology (CHB) through Wellcome funding in 2003 became the inaugural Curator of Human Osteology.

As senior curator at the inception of the Centre and over the last six years Bill has overseen many developments in the Centre, including the recording of the c.5,000 individuals of archived skeletal material onto the Oracle electronic database, Wellcome Osteological Research Database (WORD), the creation of the CHB website with downloadable data, frequent and varied out reach events and providing access and advice on the skeletal material for numerous researchers from all over the world.

It has been a great pleasure and fun to work with Bill over the last six years and he will be greatly missed in the Centre but fortunately for us he is keen to return and will do so in December under a new guise as an Emeritus Curator.

We would all like to wish him well and much happiness in his retirement.

Jelena Bekvalac
Curator of Human Osteology
Department of Archaeological Collections and Archive

Doing this of course takes a lot of time and effort, and this year I decided that I wanted to find out how effective some of this social software is for the Museum in reaching out to, and attracting, new users who end up visiting the Museum’s website, and even better, if users actually end up visiting one or both of our Museums.

As I was also studying part-time for my Masters in Electronic Communication and Publishing at University College London, I decided to base my dissertation on this topic and started my research. I very soon realised how little I knew about web stats and surveys and the sheer number of blogs talking about blogs! By the end of my research, my head was reeling with all the information I acquired and my feelings were yo-yoing from happiness at the results, to being overwhelmed. I wondered ‘how on Earth was I going to write up so many findings, but even more daunting, how was I going to use it?!?’

Social software, what is it?

Now before I carry on, if you have stumbled across this entry and are new to the whole ‘social software’ terminology, then a very brief explanation would be that it is a general term that encompasses a number of tools that enable visitors to interact and exchange information, mainly through the web. These can include Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and many more such sites.

What did I research?

I decided that I didn’t have the time to look at all our use of social software, so I concentrated instead on our blog site (this one), and our presence on Facebook. During the research, I tried to answer the following questions:

• Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?
• Do visits to content on social software sites result in visits to the Museum of London and its website?
• Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?
• Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?
• And, should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging about my research process and what I found, so do check back.

Registered finds are objects which have some kind of individual value to them, have been worked in some form or another, or are special or unusual enough to have an individual number assigned to them.

Monday’s volunteers kicked us off with the metal objects from 199 Borough High Street, excavated from 1974 - 1976 (199BHS74). We started the day looking at some interesting bits of iron. Well, I say interesting. In truth, they were nothing special to look at, however, on the back of each object’s associated finds card was an x-ray image, which showed the hidden object within the rusty, crusty exterior. Having learnt how to pack a registered find with these unprocessed objects, we then checked the ones that had been packed previously, updating their finds location and improving the packaging when necessary. After the iron, we moved on to the lead and the copper finds, including sorting out all the coins from the site, whose labels all needed updating from site “small find” number to archival “registered find” number. By the end of the day all the site’s metal finds had been updated and checked off and we had even started looking at the stone and glass artefacts.

 Tuesday’s volunteers continued with 199BHS74 material, but the focus was on the non metals. Starting with some fascinating bone waste, just like the previous day’s team, Tuesday’s learnt how to pack unprocessed bone finds. Bone waste in itself doesn’t sound that interesting, but these were all bits that had been squared off at the ends and it is highly likely that they were intended for making dice. Some others had drill marks and there was one possible piece that may have been an intended needle.

Having updated these artefacts, Tuesday’s team, went on to check off the already processed bone objects, the rest of the glass material from Monday and then start and complete the updating/checking of the sites registered ceramics. Included in these boxes were some incredible stamped vessels and an amazing gladiator decorated piece of samian ware. By the end of the day, almost all the non metals had been checked and by doing so and amalgamating a couple of boxes along the way, we had reduced the site by 3 boxes!

Wednesday saw the second week of finds for our U3A / Mossbourne Academy Shared Learning project. The volunteers, tackled metal artefacts from Shoreditch Park excavations (NNR05), including brooches, badges, buttons, spoons, thimbles, knitting needles, toy soldiers and decorative mounts. There was a fair amount of wire and metal fittings too… For more info about their session visit their wiki site.

 Thursday’s volunteers started their day with a completely new site - Canvin Street, Hammersmith (CVS74). Finds from this site included tobacco pipes, tortoise shell fan and 18th century wall tiles. Having completed these, they then finished  the general glass finds from 199BHS74, ending  their session with leather finds from 2 forthcoming sites, Ludgate Hill (LH74) & New Fresh Wharf (NFW74).

 This week also so the start of our specialist workshops; Liz Goodman explained conservation practices on Monday, followed by Geoff Egan on metal medieval/post medieval goodies on Tuesday, an excellent talk on tobacco pipes on Wednesday by Jacqui Pearce and Jackie Keily completed the set on Thursday with leather finds.

Below are some images of finds seen this week - for more visit our Flickr Site

An archaeological archive differs from a traditional archive as it includes both records (paper, photographic, digital) and finds. At the LAARC, we accept archives relating to archaeological projects undertaken in the Greater London area, and I am responsible for managing the digital records that are received as part of these archives. Archaeology and computing are closely intertwined, and archaeologists are often considered to be at the cutting edge when it comes to all things ‘IT’! Archaeology can generate a wealth of digital records including GIS data sets, digital site plans and drawings, reports, databases and spreadsheets, digital photos, video footage and even websites. Since I started at the LAARC, we have received over 10 000 new digital files!

More specifically, my job as Archaeological Records (Digital) Officer involves:

• checking through the digital records that are deposited to see that they have been prepared in accordance with our Standards for Deposition,
• archiving the records and preparing them for download via our Online Catalogue so that they are easily accessible to researchers, and
• ‘technology watch’ - keeping up to date with digital preservation issues and new advances in archaeology and digital technology

In addition, I assist LAARC Archivist Cath Maloney by responding to general enquiries, issuing site or ‘project’ codes to contractors commencing new archaeological projects in London and supervising researchers who visit the LAARC. I also get involved with the LAARC’s outreach activities which I really enjoy - it’s good to take a break from my computer every once and a while!

As per all our projects, we start each day of the first week with an hour’s induction. Volunteers are given a shiny new handbook and we go through things such as a brief introduction to LAARC and its volunteer projects, our policies, the layout of the archive and our risk assessment. Then, once the health and safety tour is complete, we get cracking with the archaeology.

All volunteers worked on Glynn’s side of the project for week one and the first site tackled was a tricky one indeed. In fact, the site was actually two sites muddled up: Bonded Warehouse, Montague Close (BWMC74) and Hibernia Chambers, Montague Close, (HC74). Both excavated in 1974, the finds somehow got mixed up along the way with some HC74 finds in boxes marked up as BWMC74 and visa versa; some bits of pot had been published under BWMC74 (even if HC74 on the label); others had trench numbers with context numbers which then had to be matched up to group numbers; others had hardly any information at all.

So, pretty much throwing the new VIPs into the deep end. However, this didn’t worry the 15 new starters this week as all found themselves sorting out Roman pottery from amphorae to samian and everything in between.

 …From this to this…

The days were completed by visits to our Ceramic & Glass Store, where we took a closer look at complete vessels in all their glory.

 On the other strand of the project, Wednesday’s University of the Third Age / Mossbourne Academy collaboration, volunteers starting work on the registered finds from Shoreditch Park, (NNR05). Split into three small teams, 12 volunteers packed, re-labelled and updating the finds cards for the glass, ceramic and half of the abundance of plastic from the site. They even made a start with some of the clay tobacco pipes. For more info about this part of the VIP project visit its wiki: www.laarcu3aslp09.wetpaint.com

Next week will see the volunteers start work on registered finds and we’ll also commence the first round of specialist workshops.

Go to the Museum of London Learning section

Go to the Museum of London Docklands Learning section

This is the end of quite a big work project for me and I’m quite pleased with the results.

There are three big reasons why the new sections are a good thing:

1. They tidy up the way that we present a large amount of information about our learning programmes online
2. They give a nice, easy, attractive and clear way for children to find a selection of our fun online games (see kids section)
3. You can now find out information through either of the two websites (Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands)

A substantial number of the resources that were previously available are still available on the sites. Let us know in the comments below if you can’t find anything and we’ll try and direct you.

There are also some new resources. Here are 6 cool new things featured in the new learning sections:

1. We took this opportunity to make some new interactive whiteboard presentations and quizzes available for KS2 Tudors, KS2 Anglo-Saxons, KS2 Romans, KS3 Romans and KS3 Medieval.  See the resources section for more information.
2. Each of our schools sessions now have their own webpage which will eventually link to the relevant teachers pack (some are already up, others are coming soon).  See the Museum of London ‘what’s on -schools’ section and the Museum of London Docklands ‘what’s on - schools’ section for more information.
3. Each of our adult courses now has their own page as well.  See the ‘adult courses’ section
4. We have a regularly updated ‘session availability‘ pages for Museum of London and Museum of London Docklands so you can check before calling the box office which dates are still available for the school session you’d like
5. There’ll be information to help you with your risk assessments going up very soon
6. It should be much easier to join our Teachers Network and stay informed!

Please look at the new sites and let me know what you think, especially if you regularly used the old site.  I hope you find the new sites useful and easy to use!

I’ve recently returned from Ireland, where I’ve been doing some delivering professional development training to Irish Professional Institutions in Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC). In my “day job” I work as an archaeologist excavating sites before development – and monitoring developments as they take place – but over the 20-odd (very odd?) years with the Museum that has got more and more to do with planning. HLC is concerned with tracing the historic origin of the everyday landscape we all see, all of the time, rather than archaeological sites.

See some photos of Clare and Galway and where it was taken: www.panoramio.com/user/2865482 (click on each thumbnail and you should get a map and some notes too).

I got involved in this from collaborating with Irish specialists in the Clare Landscape Character Assessment.

Updated on 6 October with some example images:

More images avaiable at: www.panoramio.com/user/2865482

As assistant curator for the gallery, I’ve been gathering together the images for the displays, a few of which are displayed below. These will be sent to the 2D designer very shortly so that she can create the graphic panel and caption designs. So far I’ve got all the Great Fire images sorted as I was previously the curator of the London’s Burning exhibition (see www.museumoflondon.org.uk/londonsburning for more information on the Great Fire).

My next job is to get images for the plague section ready. Watch this space for more on the gallery as it progresses.

Meriel Jeater, curator
Department of Archaeological Collections and Archive

Click on each image to see a larger picture.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of what the users of LAARC web site really think. On a personal note, I was thrilled to learn that LAARC catalogue users exist! This means that the work that has been put in this web resource and will be put into it, is not attested to by some stillborn enterprise.

Summarizing your comments several interesting points have been raised

• provide more kinds of filtered searches, e.g. “Roman pottery filtered by presence of a digital archive”
• provide more kinds of filtered searches, e.g. “Roman pottery filtered by presence of a digital archive”
• make more data on site archives available on-line (in addition to downloadable zipped archive bundles)
• extend mapping and plotting of geographical data about sites
• semantic search, e.g. ‘monastery’ or ‘latrine’ rather then ‘THE07′

It would be good to collect more use cases on these points, e.g. examples of other possible filtered searches, examples of archive data that could be brought on-line etc. Perhaps, you could point us to the links to other web resources containing desirable features that could also be implemented within LAARC catalogue?

A few comments about the current state of LAARC on-line catalogue

The map images to accompany site records returned to the live site in early August, and data updates were fixed back in July. New data was pumped onto the live site weekly up until 3 weeks ago when the web server was brought down by various attacks. Although the server is now running again some problems remain and we cannot yet perform data uploads, so there have been no updates to the data visible on the web site since then. However, those of you who visit Mortimer Wheeler House have access to the MoL internal version of the LAARC web application (no maps though).

LAARC staff work very hard to prepare digital archives, the web team makes them available to the web users but is not involved in the actual preparation of the digital archives for distribution.

Our vision for LAARC catalogue

Our ultimate ambition is to make LAARC catalogue a kind of data aggregator that is able to mash up data from the Museum’s Mimsy XG collections database with other information resources, and at the same time expose LAARC data in the formats (mostly xml, but also plain text, csv and other formats) that will allow other web services use it and mash it up with their resources. That is, to integrate LAARC catalogue data with the wider cultural information grid.

Of course, we are well aware that even partially achieving these goals means a good year’s worth of work, and given our very limited web development resources may be even longer. The prototype that lays out the architecture should be ready in November and will be linked to from the current LAARC on-line catalogue. There won’t be much visual effect as most of the effort at this stage has gone into engineering the invisible parts of the software that lay the foundations for the diverse presentation formats. And as with all software development the first release (a so called “alpha” release) will be intended for testing bugs until the next version comes out, which will have more functionality and more features. And so it will go in an iterative way (we hope).

The current LAARC catalogue site will remain available online, but no more new features will be put into the existing site. This is because the technology it uses limits its extensibility. Instead the development effort will focus on the new version of LAARC catalogue for which we are in the process of designing a flexible and extendable architecture.

There is also a risk that LAARC catalogue development may be put on hold temporarily as the need for other development will shift the priorities. Nevertheless, we are determined to continue doing work on LAARC catalogue even though the progress may not be as speedy as we would like it to be.
We also think that this blog can be an effective means for updating the users on the progress of the project development, so watch this space if you are interested. You can even add it as an RSS feed to your RSS reader.
And naturally, it will be fantastic if we could engage you in a continuing dialogue in order to build a bank of ideas of what LAARC catalogue should be.

Julia Fernee, Museum of London Web Development

During VIP1 – VIP3, our achievements include the repacking, reordering by context and closing up the gaps in the shelf space for all general finds from 37 archives dug from 1972 – 1974; the separation of general and registered metal finds from 353 sites and the relocation of these finds in sitecode order onto new shelving; the auditing of 5215 registered finds from sites spanning 1972 – 1974.

A total of 72 VIP volunteers have worked on the project, from a range of sources including Action for Employment, Connections at St Martins, UCL, University of the 3rd Age & Hackney Volunteer Agency. So what’s the plan for VIP4?Well, work shall continue in both sections of the archive; Glynn will tackle the next batch of sites from 1974, including huge excavations such as New Fresh Wharf (NFW74). Adam on the other hand will keep on going with the Registered finds from 1974, first tackling 199 Borough High Street (199BHS74) but hopefully getting all the way to Trig Lane (TL74), if not beyond…

Instead of the usual 5 volunteers a day, Mon-Thursday, we’ve upped it to 6 per day, exc. Wednesday, where we shall be joined by 10 volunteers from the University of the 3rd Age alongside three 6th formers from Mossbourne Academy. These lucky 13 will be working on the material from Shoreditch Park, as part of a Shared Learning Project

There will once again be 4 museum specialists running 4 workshops each fortnight, which are open for all volunteers within the museum (though to keep it a surprise, I won’t tell you what they are just yet). And finally… we’ve actually already set a date for our Christmas Party, which, to those in the know, is undoubtedly the best one around!

Each week Adam & Glynn will be posting blogs telling you what we’ve been up to that week, updating you on our progress and putting up photos of finds and people at work

Living and working in a city of London’s magnitude, with its densely packed population and layer upon layer of history, it is not uncommon for the dead of long ago to resurface. A gardener may accidently have uncovered some remains or construction workers digging new building foundations may have disturbed an old rubbish pit full of animal bone or an unexpected burial ground.

Human or animal?

When the police are contacted, the first vital question they need to answer is whether the bone is human or animal. To an untrained and sometimes trained eye, tiny fragments of bone can often be difficult to distinguish.

Working with archaeological material on a daily basis, osteologists at Museum of London Archaeology often encounter poorly preserved and heavily fragmented bone and disarticulated skeletons (where the bones are no longer in anatomical position). These may have originated from burials that have degraded or been disturbed in the ground over time, or bone that has been deliberately burnt and broken through the act of cremation. Animal bone is also a common finding on archaeological sites and is often mixed with the human skeletons.

 The experience and familiarity gained by working with such material gives the osteologist an advantage in identifying bone. Many medical doctors for example, may only be used to dealing with recent, well preserved and complete human skeletal material or might not have handled animal bone.

Following a phone call, osteologists will either visit the site where the bone was found or occasionally the police may bring the remains into the office. If the bone is identified as animal, and is of no interest to the police, the English Heritage area Archaeological Advisor will usually be informed and if the find is of archaeological significance, further work may take place.

Modern or old?

If the bone is human, then the next question that the police need to know is whether it is of modern or historical/ archaeological date.

Using GIS, a system which allows us to look at historic maps and the location of previous archaeological finds overlaid onto the modern ordnance survey maps, we can quickly determine if the remains are likely to have originated from a historic burial ground.

Importantly, by visiting the site and seeing the remains in the ground where they were found, we can look at the different layers of soil which have built up through time and together with any artefacts found can use this to determine what period the bone dates from. If the bone is deemed of archaeological date (defned by the Human Tissue Act as 100 years old or more) then the Ministry of Justice, and the local Archaeological Advisor are contacted to discuss the best way to proceed. This may warrant further archaeological investigation.

On rare occasions, where bone is thought to be modern and suspicious then our experienced Forensic Archaeologists assist the police in the recovery of the remains and associated evidence. Archaeological excavation techniques involve the detailed collection and recording of evidence that can be vital in the reconstruction of a possible crime.

Detailed recording of the human remains can provide evidence of age and sex and may help with victim identification. Analysis of the bone may also help establish a date: evidence of modern dental work for example will distinguish the material from archaeological remains. Samples may also be sent for radiocarbon dating to help determine what time period the person lived.

If human bones are encountered (or if you find remains and are unsure if they are human or not) you should always contact the police first, it may also be appropriate to contact the GLAAS Advisor for your area. Human remains whether from a modern or archeological time should always be treated with care and respect. It is vital that the bone is not disturbed further or removed from the ground. This will help to preserve the bone and if left situ (where they were found), this will retain important information about the context and type of burial.

Click here for further information and contact details of the Museum of London Archaeology Forensic Archaeology team.

Unfortunately, at present we do not have any vacancies or opportunities for work experience in this area. If you are interested in finding out more about forensic archaeology you may find the links below of interest. There are also a large number of Universities with undergraduate and post-graduate courses which include aspects of forensic archaeology.

www.forensic-science-society.org.uk

www.bahid.org

 The Walbrook curse
Found in Princes Street, near the Bank of England in 1928
1st-2nd century AD

As the nights draw in and Halloween draws nearer, the Museum this month turns to the dark arts for inspiration for its object of the month, as one of our Visitor Hosts, Kimberley Ahmet, sheds some light on a superstitious object from our Roman gallery…

“In the Museum of London, you will hear the soothing sound of pipe music playing softly near the end of the Roman Gallery. This lulling sound is broken by four strident voices that cry out, causing some of our younger visitors to jump with fright. What are these voices and what are they saying?

Well, in our ‘Spirituality or Superstition case’ you will find objects like clay figures, amulets, vases and religious ornaments. Amongst them you will also be able to find three irregular pieces of cut grey lead. If you look really closely, you will see that each piece has been inscribed with Latin words.

The words you can see are curses, written by angry or vengeful Roman Londoners who wanted retribution.

This month’s object we are highlighting from our collection is a Roman curse inscribed on a piece of lead that was found with a small rectangular hole pierced in the middle.

That hole was created by a nail which would have fixed the curse to a wooden post at one of the Roman shrines which once stood on the banks of the Walbrook stream that flowed south through the City of London down to near Cannon Street Station and is now buried underneath roads, buildings and tube train tunnels.

The lead has been inscribed on both sides with the same Latin inscription. In English it reads: “Titus Egnatius Tyrannus and Publius Cicereius Felix is Cursed.”

In the same case you will find another example of a curse, this one only has the name “Martia Martina” inscribed in reverse. We can’t be sure why the name was written backwards. One theory is that by writing the name back to front it made the curse more potent.

Unlike the Walbrook curse which was nailed onto a post, we think that this curse was folded or rolled up before being cast into a well. Others have been found in the River Thames. Religious belief regarded such water as rivers, streams and even wells as the express way of sending messages to the gods – a bit like recorded delivery today!

Lots of our younger visitors ask us who the people on the inscriptions were but more importantly, what it was they had done to get cursed in the first place. We will never know for certain. The majority of curses generally just feature one or more names, but very rarely do we find more detail. 

Curses were a way of sending a petition to the gods, asking for help. It was also a way of letting everyone else know that this person was not to be trusted. Imagine if you were walking past a post and saw a piece of lead cursing someone you know, do you think it would make you think twice about the trust you place in them? And what about if it was you being cursed – how would you feel?!

There are many different reasons that a Roman Londoner could warrant a curse. They could be thought to have stolen something valuable, an item of clothing, or perhaps maybe they simply knew too much.

One of the scariest curses that I have ever heard translates as: “I curse Tretia Maria and her life, mind and memory, and liver, and lungs, all mixed up together, and her words, thoughts and memories. Thus may she be unable to speak what things are concealed…..’”

Find out more about our curses on the Museum’s new ‘Living in Roman London’ website.

So, what exactly are all these people wanting to research? Well, here’s just a small taste of some of the research topics we have dealt with so far this year:

• 17th century Bellarmine witch bottles
• Coffin plates (these are of immense interest to family historians)
• Pre-Boudican London
• Post-medieval brooches
• Nonsuch Palace
• London’s friaries
• Brentford pottery kilns
• Cemeteries such as Spitalfields, east London
• All things Roman including Roman cemeteries, coins, glass, armour and a Roman horse found at Finsbury Park!

Has this list inspired you to think about undertaking research at the LAARC? If so, please contact us: http://www.museumoflondonarchaeology.org.uk/English/ArchiveResearch/Contact/

The LAARC Team

This information is managed by the Museums’ London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre (LAARC). Just in case, you don’t know where it is, the catalogue is part of the Museums website and can be found at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/laarc/catalogue.

The web site is aimed at delivering the LAARC’s vast and invaluable data resources on London Archaeology to researchers and to the public at large.It was launched in 2000 and as we are fast approaching 2010 we believe after nearly a decade, it could do with some improvement. Ideas have been brewing for some time on how to infuse life into the LAARC online catalogue. Our vision for redevelopment of LAARC web resource is greatly inspired by the new generation Web 2.0 and cloud computing technologies for data mining and information exchange. However, ultimately our goal is to deliver to the users of LAARC a web tool that is beneficial for your investigative zest and that would help foster your interest in London archaeology.Your views are important to us and will help us greatly to move the project forward in the right direction.

We will appreciate very much if you let us know:

• Is the LAARC online catalogue a useful data resource?
• What can we do to make it more useful and interesting?
• What do you like/dislike about the current web site?
• What content, data, display, navigation or features are the most desirable to you?
• What would make the LAARC web resource more attractive to you?

I very much look forward to hearing from you. Please post your answers or comments in the comments box below, or email us at webmanager@museumoflondon.org.uk.

Many thanks,

Julia Fernee, Museum of London Web Development

 

Hi there, my name is Henry and I volunteer at LAARC. The archive team invited me to help them two years ago and I’ve been here ever since, usually helping for an hour or so a week. However, over the past two weeks, I’ve been helping Adam and Glynn each day.

Most people know that the LAARC has 10km of shelving and over 100,000 boxes, however, not everyone realises that the archive also has over 10,000 breezeblocks that make up its walls. Unfortunately these breezeblocks emit much dust into the air, which over the years has settled on the numerous archival containers.  My role is to remove the dust that has been sitting around on shelves and boxes for several years.

I start at 10am with my brush nozzle head on and suck up the dust from the tops of the shelves. Goodness! What a load of dust! It usually takes about 2 hours to thoroughly get through a length of racking, after which I switch to using my long flat vacuum head (with brush!) and sweep and suck the floor simultaneously. Who says men can’t multi task!

At the end of the day it’s my turn for a little dust down, when one of the team wipes me with a cloth. They then put me back in my cozy little box.

Before I was volunteering I used to think my life sucked, but being here makes me very happy and I like to think I am an essential part of the archive volunteer team -  it’s nice to know I play my part in the upkeep of London’s excellent archaeological store.

The Learning section will include:

• information for teachers about our schools programmes
• printable resources for teachers to support our schools programmes
• online resources for teachers and pupils to use either to support a visit to the Museums or independently
• fun games for children to play online
• information about our adult learning courses
• factpacks to help you learn more about the history of London

Why not take a look around the site as it looks at the moment http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/learning. It’s already got loads of interesting stuff on there. We’re not adding any new resources at this stage, we’re just trying to make it easier to find.

Take a look around now and get familiar with how it looks at the moment. I’d love to hear your feedback on how it compares once the new site is launched!

There may still be problems with accessing parts of the sites, so please continue to bear with us. We value your visits and hope to see you soon.