Journal Article

  • A departmental face to social media: Lessons learnt from promoting natural history collections at National Museum Cardiff
    Mortimer, K., Wood, H., Gallichan, J.
    Journal of Natural Science Collections, Volume 3, pages 18 - 28

    The Natural Sciences Department at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales has been using social media to highlight its collections, research and events since 2011. Since then various platforms have been utilised, such as Twitter, Facebook, Storify, blog pages and Flickr to increase profile through social media. Over the last two years a change in working practices have ensured an increased following and consequently a raised awareness of the collections by followers. Information has been successfully inter-connected across different social media platforms and linked to more traditional media sources such as web pages, on-line databases and catalogues. Effective monitoring of outputs has enabled efforts for the presence of the whole department on social media to be streamlined, efficient and produce a wide range of successful products.

    Keywords: Social media; Public engagement; Natural history museums; Twitter; Storify; Flickr; Blogs; Advocacy; New audiences