Several studies have highlighted the absence of an integrated comprehensive dataset covering all of the UK’s museums, hence impeding research into the emergence, evolution, and wider impact of the UK’s museums sector. “Mapping Museums” is an interdisciplinary project aiming to develop a comprehensive database of UK museums in existence since 1960, and to use this to undertake an evidence-based analysis of the development of the UK’s museum sector during 1960--2020 and the links to wider cultural, social, and political concerns. A major part of the project has been the iterative, participatory design of a new RDF/S Knowledge Base to store data and metadata relating to the UK’s museums, and a Web Application for the project’s humanities scholars to browse, search, and visualise the data to investigate their research questions. This article presents the challenges we faced in developing the Knowledge Base and Web Application, our methodology and methods, the design and implementation of the system, and the design, outcomes, and implications of a user trial undertaken with a group of experts from the UK’s museums sector.

Surveys of the UK museum sector have all had subtly different remits and so represent the sector in a variety of ways. In the last three decades, surveys have almost invariably focused on accredited institutions, thereby omitting almost half of the museums in the UK. In this article we examine how data collection became tied to the accreditation scheme, and its effects on how the museum sector was and is represented as a professionalised sphere. Yet, while is important to understand the role of surveys in constructing the museum sector, this article goes beyond critique to show how the inclusion of unaccredited museums drastically changes the profile of the museum sector. We outline the inclusive approach that the Mapping Museums project team has taken with regards to data collection, and compare our findings with those that are produced when a survey is limited to accredited museums. In so doing, we sketch out an alternative, heterogeneous version of the UK museum sector and make recommendations based on that evidence

Museums and heritage sites have provided merchandise for visitors to purchase since their earliest incarnations as public attractions in the 18 th century. Despite this longevity scant academic research has been directed towards such activities. However, retailing -formalised in the emergence of the museum shop -offers insights into a range of issues, from cultural representation and education, to economic sustainability. This paper outlines the historical development of retailing at museums and heritage sites in the UK, before offering a summary of current issues, illustrated by a case study of contemporary retailing at Whitby Abbey. The paper demonstrates how commercial spaces have made, and continue to make, important contributions to visitors' cultural experiences and aims to frame this topic as a legitimate field of academic enquiry.

This paper examines social media activity by UK museums during the COVID‐19 pandemic. There is a general perception that as museums closed their doors for extended periods, their digital presence increased to maintain connections with their audiences. However, much of the research conducted in this area is based on small‐scale studies and examples of best practice from large, well‐resourced museums. By contrast, this study utilizes a comprehensive database of over 3300 active UK museums to understand the use of Facebook and Twitter across the sector. Specifically, the paper examines the frequency with which museums posted to these digital platforms as they attempted to engage with their audiences. Our findings indicate that there was no substantial increase in social media use and activity across the UK museum sector during the COVID‐19 pandemic. This research has implications for museologists studying the impact of the pandemic on museums' digital activity, for museum social media professionals, and policymakers responsible for museum digital transformation strategies.

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