This article covers the key findings from a set of qualitative and quantitative research carried out in 2019–2020. This study investigated the relationship between public and professional perceptions of contemporary collecting with particular focus on science, technology and medical museums.

This article explores collaborative conversation as a method to surface multiple perspectives on community engagement and forms of knowledge creation in the Congruence Engine project.

This article explores collaborative conversation as a method to surface multiple perspectives on community engagement and forms of knowledge creation in the Congruence Engine project.

How can digital methods be used to better connect and understand communications heritage collections? Potential areas of research, challenges and projects to pursue under the Communications strand of the Congruence Engine are discussed, in connection with trends in historiography.

How can we most usefully interconnect the collections of energy artefacts in our museums? The Congruence Engine project’s energy team explore the challenges and possibilities of doing so, focusing initially on the twin themes of steam turbines and coal-mining disasters.

A comparison of the early histories of the industrial collections within National Museums Scotland, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, and Birmingham Museums Trust, and the implications of those histories for their respective contributions to the distributed national industrial collection.

In this opening essay, we are looking to frame this special issue as an active unfolding of the process of creating a national collection, situating action research as a method of doing, of opening up, and of activating the multiplicity of ways of creating the connections that transform discrete ‘nationally held’ collections into a national collection that is born out of the process of doing historical research.