Museums in the 21st century are faced with multiple challenges and opportunities not the least of which is reduced funding, relevance, and accessibility. The application of innovative and exciting methodologies of molecular biology and digitisation are broadening access and challenging established work methods and best practice. The workforce that makes all this possible is reduced and changing. There has been a rapid move to the use of risk assessment, prioritisation and the application of general management concepts to developing strategies and plans. All these rely on gathering and interpreting vital data.

The 4 week online course Tools for Strategic Management of Collections provides a practical introduction to a number of recent methods for assessing quality of collections management and care against benchmarks and also identifying staff competencies and providing data for strategic use of resources. The course is aimed at a broad audience from collections managers with day-to-day collections responsibilities to senior managers including those entering collections management from non–natural history or research backgrounds. Although rooted in natural history collections most of these methods are adaptable to the wider museum sector.

These tools can help participants address questions such as:

• Are we managing our collections in such a way as to ensure their long term survival and access and what are the priorities for improvement?
• What staff competencies do we need to achieve our goals and what do we actually have? Where do we need to develop staff or hire?
• How do we decide which parts of our collections are priorities for improvement?

A number of recently developed methods will be explored including the SYNTHEYSYS self-assessment tool and EUColComp framework. The SYNTHSEYS self-assessment is an online tool for assessing a wide range of collections functions from finance to use of appropriate materials (see http://www.synthesys.info/network-activities/synthesys3-na2/self-assessment/). EUCollComp is a set of universal competencies for collections management to help organisations identify a) competencies required for particular roles b) individuals’ levels of competence; and c) the vocational and educational training needed to address missing/weak competencies (for more information see http://eucolcomp.myspecies.info/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDee7yGLSYw&feature=youtu.be)

Participants will be given the opportunity to experiment and use manageable sections of these tools and be introduced to other related options.

Participants will be encouraged to challenge, critically evaluate methods, and consider how they might be applied or modified in their own workplace and development.

Participants in this course will learn:

• How to use tools available to assess overall performance in collections management and care in their institution/department/team.
  
• The value of frameworks in describing, developing, and managing staff competency to meet strategic goals.
  
• How to use the EuColComp framework to plan your own development, training, and progression.
• How to use the framework to identify competencies needed in institution/department and relate this to existing competencies.
• How to choose appropriate development to match competencies needed.
• How to use new tools to prioritise improvements to particular collections based on their value to science, heritage, and their broad condition.
• How these various tools might be linked to provide seamless connections from museum objectives to individual competency.