Читать книгу Museum Media - Группа авторов - Страница 14

As general editors of The International Handbooks in Museum Studies, we – Sharon Macdonald and Helen Rees Leahy – are delighted that Museum Media is now appearing in paperback, as a self-standing volume. So too are the other volumes, which is testament to the strength of these volumes individually, as well as collectively, and to the importance of the issues that they each address. Museum Media clearly concerns a fundamental area of museum studies – museums can be said to in a sense be media, as well as to deploy a wide range of different forms of media. Despite the fact that media are fundamental to museums – and thus to museum studies – there is not, however, an established consensus on precisely what might be covered under the label “museum media”. One reason for this is the relative recency of museum studies as a field. A second reason is that museum studies draws on a wide range of disciplines, each themselves renewing their toolkits in various ways, resulting in new impulses for thinking about the media in museums. In addition, and perhaps of most significance, is the fact of change in the media available for use in museums. This results in fresh thinking about the possibilities for deploying such media, as well as for consideration of its potential consequences not only for engaging new audiences but also for rethinking what the museum already does, as well as what it might do in new ways.

Confronted by the fast-changing world of new media, as well as fascinating redeployments of older media, the editor of Museum Media, Michelle Henning, in consultation with us as general editors, faced a task of how to achieve a volume that would cover approaches that have become central to consideration of museum media, while also being sure to include as much as possible of the new directions and ideas that have been emerging in recent years. That this was achieved so well is evident from the resulting volume. The range of topics included and the ways in which they are tackled, provide a sound and also cutting-edge coverage of museum media.