‘Reality check’ is the working title for an OER consisting of interviews with staff at the Museum of English Rural Life. Staff talked about their daily responsibilities and what motivated them, managing to strike a good balance between being positive and not glamming up their jobs. This will be an OER for students about to start a placement at the Museum. I’m also wondering whether it could be used by prospective students for the Museum Studies joint Honours BA due to start at Reading next year, for them to get some kind of idea about what Museum work is really like.
Sample quotes: ‘A lot of what I’m employed to do is admin. Increasingly the curatorial emphasis on research and spending lots of time musing over objects is being eroded.’ (Ollie Douglas, assistant curator, above). ‘A lot of what I do is supporting people in self-development and employment, and I think that’s very important. Many volunteers come to us because we are a safe environment that gives them the opportunity to make new friends and feel part of an organisation.’ (Rob Davies, volunteer coordinator).
Technical issues continue. File sizes are too large, audio files can’t be deleted from the interface, the interface is clunky. Not quite good enough to test with students yet, despite what I said in the last post. I have to admit that one of the frustrations of technology – focused projects is that the tecchie parts take much longer than designing the actual resources, but it’s the latter that is more important. I’m looking forward to a chat with someone from Reading’s IT department on Friday to hopefully knock a few issues on the head.