Museum compass 28.
Title: Focus on the audience A Guide to Family, Child and School-Friendly Museum Operation, Quality Management of Museum Education, Volunteering, and School Community Service at the Museum (IKSZ).
Edited by Magdolna Nagy
The issue is downloadable here.
The volume dedicated to the quality-oriented operation of museums consists of three large units. The title of the first chapter is Focus on the audience, just like the main title of the publication itself. The foundation of quality service delivery is that the museum needs to identify its target group, set priorities and plan what services it intends to offer to whom and how. To be able to accomplish this, museums need to know the expectations of their potential target group. Chapter one will help museum professionals learn about segmentation and understanding the needs and expectations of the audience.
The second chapter, Criteria for a satisfied audience, presents steps and tasks aimed to increase the satisfaction of the groups concerned. Aspects compiled by museum professionals, educators, preschool teachers and university lecturers help to create a familyfriendly, child-friendly, kindergarten-friendly and school-friendly operation.
The title of the third chapter is A guide to improving internal processes. A quality assurance model has been developed for three areas: museum education, school community service, and museum volunteering management. They provide a guide to the quality-oriented operation of these three areas.
But how are these sets of criteria and the systems developed for the quality assurance of internal processes related to the museum quality management framework presented in Museum Compass1 volume 27? They are interrelated, however, each set of criteria can be applied independently without the introduction of a quality management framework.
For example, if a museum focuses on families and wants to use a family-friendly operational model, it will not only increase the satisfaction of families as a target audience, but will also take steps to improve organization, transparency and quality. Therefore, even though it was not the original purpose, it has in fact already taken an important step towards a museum quality management system.
Guides have already been prepared for the management of museum education, school community service and volunteers: the set of criteria for School-friendly museum presented in this volume may be used while reconsidering museum education activities. MIKSZ - Practical Guide to Organizing a School Community Service at the Museum 2 discussed in Museum compass Volume 20 provides helpful advice to make school community service more effective, while A practical guide to setting up and operating volunteer programmes at institutions 3 helps organizing volunteer activities.
The quality assurance steps now being developed mean that the processes of these activities will be4 operated by the museum by ensuring the application of the PDCA cycle, because that is the key to quality operation. Each of the three quality assurance systems designed for the three areas can be easily integrated into the elements of a future quality management framework.
By applying any of the sets of criteria and operating models presented in this volume, the museum takes an important step towards quality-oriented operation. Giving it a chance ito a win-win business: if a museum chooses to implement only one set of criteria, such as a school-friendly operational model, and will not move towards a quality management system, the satisfied teachers, students and related growth in the number of orders will be the profit realized by the institution. Should the quality management framework be introduced later, it will be easier to establish it, since existing quality models can be incorporated into it.
Magdolna Nagy
1 Vera GÖNDÖR - Tibor GREGÁSZ - Zoltán KERTÉSZ 2020
2 Emese JOÓ 2019 can be downloaded from the MOKK website: http://mokk.skanzen.hu/miksz. html (downloaded on: 20.11.2019)
3 Izabella CSORDÁS 2017http://mokk.skanzen.hu/admin/data/file/20190402/csk_utmutato_ onkentesseg_online.pdf (downloaded on: 20.11.2019)
