TY  -  JOUR
TI  -  Origins and ambitions of the Congruence Engine project
  AU -Tim Boon
PY  -  2022
VL  - Congruence Engine
IS  - Autumn 2022
KW - action research
KW - collections
KW - curation
KW - digital humanities
KW - digitisation
KW - Interdisciplinarity
KW - multidisciplinarity
KW - museum history
KW - participatory practice
KW - Research in museums

AB - The Congruence Engine project arises from museum practice, especially that of the Science Museum; its origins are in the character of curatorial work and also in the frustrations that often arise when seeking to democratise access to the extraordinary cultural capital that sits unrealised in collections, especially reserve collections. It is built on an appreciation of the differing kinds of relevant research practice, now united in the conduct of the project: curatorial, academic, social and digital. The origins are, of course, also in the character of the collections that we draw on, in which context their history is deeply significant: the total national collection is made up of idiosyncratic components. The Towards a National Collection funding scheme aims to actualise potentials that arise from the heritage sector’s digital practice over the last decades. Here too the history is relevant, because our potential practice is constrained by old decisions about what and how collections should be digitised and informed by the first decades of practice in database use and online content. The diversity of working cultures that combine in heritage digital practice is also a factor. Many of the project’s ambitions have been brewing in the Science Museum Group’s Research Department practice since its origins in 2010: public and intermedial history, participatory practice and, overall, an assertion of the importance of research to museum futures. After discussing the project, the article finishes with ideas for two potential investigations.

N1 - See: https://www.nationalcollection.org.uk/, accessed 11 August 2022.  
N1 - For example, when the physicist and historian of Science Herbert Dingle proposed to the Museum’s Advisory Council a regime of renaming of science museums in 1952 (Herbert Dingle, ‘The Scope and Co-ordination of our museums of science’, October 1951, paper presented at the 8 Jan 1952 meeting of the Science Museum Advisory Council, p 3, Science Museum Archives Z193/2). Another example is the resurrection in Neil Cossons’ time of director of the interwar coinage ‘National Museum of Science and Industry (NMSI)’. 
N1 - It was absorbed into the Science Department of the SKM in 1883; Bud, 2018, pp 24–5.
N1 - See also the 1995 special issue of The British Journal for the History of Science, including: Morton, Alan Q., ‘Introduction’, 1995, The British Journal for the History of Science, 28.1, pp 1–3 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087400032660
N1 - See archived versions: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20170405142426/http://www.ingenious.org.uk/Read/, https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20170405141510/http://www.makingthemodernworld.org.uk/,  https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20180801134340/http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/ 
N1 - See https://www.inventingeurope.eu/ (accessed 17 October 2022) 
N1 - Frank Sherwood Taylor ‘Report on the Science Museum in 1951’ to Advisory Committee meeting, 11 July 1951, Z193/2, p 12 
N1 - See https://www.nationalcollection.org.uk/Foundation-Projects (accessed 12 August 2022)  
N1 - 99,928,800 on 15 August 2022 
N1 - This was a joint enterprise of the Science Museum, the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York and the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds. The reports of this initiative are available here: https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/project/phostem-network-workshops/ (accessed 11 August 2022) 
N1 - See: https://bradfordsnationalmuseum.org/ (accessed 28 August 2022)
N1 - See: http://yarncommunity.org/ (accessed 28 August 2022) 
N1 - The argument for this will be articulated in the introduction to a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Science, ‘The Public Culture of Science Through an Intermedial Lens’, edited by the current author and Jean-Baptiste Gouyon, expected to be published in 2023. 
N1 - Tim Boon and Jean-Baptiste Gouyon (eds), ‘The Public Culture of Science Through an Intermedial Lens’, special issue of BJHS, forthcoming, 2023. 
N1 - See project blog: ‘Reflecting on the Textiles Pilot’, https://ceblog.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/2022/08/22/reflecting-on-the-textiles-pilot/ (accessed, 25 August 2022)
N1 - https://www.pistonpenandpress.org/ (accessed 25 August 2022)  
N1 - See https://thebrickbox.co.uk/projects/the-mills-are-alive/ (accessed 15 August 2022)  
N1 - Frank Sherwood Taylor ‘Report on the Science Museum in 1951’ to Advisory Committee meeting, 11 July 1951, Z193/2, p 12 
PB - The Science Museum Group
 
SN -  2054-5770
LA -  eng
DO -  10.15180/221801
UR -  https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/origins-and-ambitions-of-the-congruence-engine-project/
T2 -  Science Museum Group Journal