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In this special tenth birthday issue of the Science Museum Group Journal we look back at the achievements of the last decade and forward to an exciting future of change and development. Retiring Head of Research at the Deutches Museum, Helmuth Trischler, reflects on what it has taken to create an integrated research museum; Will Law and Will Sims look back at the history of a Rhodesian Railway carriage formed through the lens of colonial history and argue for new research to centre stories of African users and workers; Paul Craddock argues that historians should use film as a research methodology especially when exploring embodied knowledge while Elizabeth Edwards, Costanza Caraffa and Ruth Quinn share a conversation on how to think about photography collections in ‘non-art’ museums. In a new article format – the downloadable toolkit, Geoff Belknap et al describe a project that used digitisation and crowdsourcing to give communities power over museum decisions and share findings and processes for others to use.  One of the most fertile formats for the journal over the last decade has been the object biography and here Christine Fergerson’s article on the Cottingley fairies scandal illustrates how a close examination of physical objects can cast new light on old assumptions. Looking forward to the future of the Journal itself Tim Boon puts forward a manifesto for what Open Access publishing may look like over the next decade. And finally, ten authors from across the fields of museums, culture, and academia chose one thing from the last decade that stands out for them. Ten authors, ten things, ten years to celebrate.

In this issue:

Issue 22 Editorial
Ian Blatchford
Communities & Crowds: a toolkit for hybrid volunteering with cultural heritage collections
Geoffrey Belknap, Samantha Blickhan, Lynn Wray, Alex Fitzpatrick, Lincoln Anderson, Lawrence Brooks, Jacob Fox, Paulien ten Hagen, Matt Hick, Adrian Hine, Maureen Rowe, Sandra Rowe, Rebecca Smith and Ruth Quinn
Tracing embodied knowledge in the history of science and medicine: expanding the role of film in historical research
Paul Craddock, Anna Harris and Film contributor: Cal Murphy Barton
In conversation: photographic curatorship and photographic cultures in museums and research institutions
Elizabeth Edwards, Costanza Caraffa and Ruth Quinn
The research museum – a place of integrated knowledge production
Helmuth Trischler
Power at play in paranormal history
Christine Ferguson
Challenging museum narratives: the case of a Rhodesia Railways carriage
Will Sims and William Law
Provocation: Journal experiments in overlay, data and provisionality
Tim Boon
Ten out of ten: a review of the last decade
Ken Arnold, Andrea Bandelli, Rachel Ellis, Jane Henderson, Michelle Henning, Rebecca Mellor, Theano Moussouri, Michal Nanoru, Hannah Redler-Hawes and Tim Snelson
By Ian Blatchford

Issue 22 Editorial

Director of the Science Museum Group Sir Ian Blatchford reflects in this editorial on the first ten years of the Science Museum Group Journal

By Geoffrey Belknap, Samantha Blickhan, Lynn Wray, Alex Fitzpatrick, Lincoln Anderson, Lawrence Brooks, Jacob Fox, Paulien ten Hagen, Matt Hick, Adrian Hine, Maureen Rowe, Sandra Rowe, Rebecca Smith and Ruth Quinn

Communities & Crowds: a toolkit for hybrid volunteering with cultural heritage collections

Communities & Crowds is an AHRC-funded project that re-examines the role of the museum volunteer by combining participatory research methods and online crowdsourcing techniques to explore how local communities can collaborate with digital volunteers around the world to increase discoverability of, and access to, the collections that matter to them. This article reflects on the project and provides toolkits for future volunteers.

Two images of a man's hands holding wood carving tools.
By Paul Craddock, Anna Harris and Film contributor: Cal Murphy Barton

Tracing embodied knowledge in the history of science and medicine: expanding the role of film in historical research

Paul Craddock and Anna Harris trace embodied knowledge in the history of science and medicine, arguing that historians might develop filmmaking methods to engage with historical or re-enacted practices of making and performance.

By Elizabeth Edwards, Costanza Caraffa and Ruth Quinn

In conversation: photographic curatorship and photographic cultures in museums and research institutions

Professor Elizabeth Edwards, Dr Costanza Caraffa, and Dr Ruth Quinn speak about photographic archival practice and the archive as a generative place.

Museum from above, with river Isar on both sides. The surrounding trees are autumnal.
By Helmuth Trischler

The research museum – a place of integrated knowledge production

Helmuth Trischler discusses the add-on value of integrating research into museums at various levels. He has continuously sought to explore new avenues for realising the vision of the ‘integrated research museum’ that connects these three fields as closely as possible.

Image of a scanned photograph in sepia tones of a young girl playing with fairies. Caption printed on the brown carboard background says 'A. Alice and the Fairies'
By Christine Ferguson

Power at play in paranormal history

This article presents a collective object biography and discussion of the Cottingley Fairy artefacts – cameras, photographs, watercolour sketches and print materials – held at the National Science and Media Museum.

By Will Sims and William Law

Challenging museum narratives: the case of a Rhodesia Railways carriage

This article examines the history of a former Rhodesia Railways carriage in the Science Museum Group’s collection to ask what stories it can tell beyond the narrative of its return. The article argues that interpretation of the carriage since its repatriation has focused on the story of its return, while gaps in the knowledge of its operational life – including the experiences of passengers and the impacts of the railway’s labour hierarchy – have been overlooked.