Council adopts a way forward for the Society's museum
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Key elements of the plan
The following are among the main elements of the
plan for the future of the museum:
- maintenance of some displays
for the benefit of members and other building users
- a continued basic collection-based
historical enquiry service and the provision of services such
as photograph reproduction and the sale of postcards, books and
object replicas
- the loan of individual items
or significant sections of the collections to other museums or
similar institutions that are able to provide public access
- the pursuit of external funding
or partnership arrangements to allow touring exhibitions and educational
resources to be produced
- making collection catalogue
data available via Society's website
- transferring the bulk of
the collections to safe and environmentally controlled off-site
storage that allows staff access for regular monitoring and the
retrieval of items for display or research
- disposal, within the acquisitions
and disposals policy, of duplicate and non-core material
- revision of the museum's
acquisition and disposals policy to restrict new acquisitions
to contemporary proprietary medicines. (The museum will retain
its collections of Controlled Drugs, proprietary medicines and
crude drugs on site.)
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The Council of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society has
reaffirmed its commitment to the Society's museum as an educational resource
and has accepted a proposal that will allow it to retain registered museum
status, despite a reduced level of activity.
In October, the Council set a budget to meet a costly
programme of modernisation and reform of the regulation of the pharmacy
profession (PJ, 20 October, p579). To fund this work, the Council
decided that it had to raise the individual member retention fee and focus
resources on priority work. It was therefore agreed that it would be necessary
to cut spending on a number of current activities, including the museum.
As announced in October, the museum curator and
the management team were given the task of identifying options for safeguarding
the collections. At its December meeting, the Council accepted a recommendation
from the team that would enable the museum to remain formally constituted,
managed by professional staff and available for educational purposes.
Under the approved proposal (see Panel), the museum will retain registered
status, ensuring that the potential grant funding can continue to be pursued
and allowing it to continue to operate within the existing Byelaw and
constitution.
Although the budget will not permit the current
level of staffing to be maintained, the museum will continue under professional
curatorship, with the support, the Society hopes, of volunteers. Members
will continue to have access to displays within the headquarters building
but, at a time of heightened awareness of security, open access to the
general public is to be discontinued. New ways will be explored to maintain
the use of the historical collections as an educational resource in the
public domain. The proposal also brings the benefit of safe, appropriate
storage for the collections (currently stored in the headquarters building
in less than ideal conditions.)
The Council also agreed that strategies for the
longer term would need to be explored. These would be considered and brought
forward at a later date.
The Society's President, Marshall Davies, said:
"Within our budgetary constraints, we now have a way forward that demonstrates
a commitment to the long term care of the historical collections and to
their educational use for the benefit of members and the wider public
so as to promote public understanding of the history and practice of pharmacy
in Britain.
"The Council is aware of the high regard that the
membership and others have for the museum. We all value our heritage and
the Council appreciates the recent progress that the museum curator and
her team have achieved in making the collections more available to the
public. What we have been seeking and what we have now identified is a
way forward that will safeguard the future of the museum while allowing
us to concentrate resources on other urgent priority work.
"We cannot fall down on our responsibilities to
the future of the pharmacy profession: we have a huge programme of crucial
work ahead and this has to be our priority at this time."
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