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    Working paper on monitoring museum closure and reopening in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic

    Liebenrood, Mark and Ballatore, Andrea and Candlin, Fiona and Larkin, Jamie and Poulovassilis, Alex and Wood, Peter (2023) Working paper on monitoring museum closure and reopening in the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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    Abstract

    Fears of widespread museum closures expressed at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted our research to monitor closures and other museum behaviour in 2021–2022. We wanted to understand how the profile of the UK sector changed in this period. Which museums closed, and what factors were at work in their closure? Did museums that closed have anything in common? Were there any trends or patterns across the sector? To monitor as many museums as possible we employed website scraping and machine learning techniques to perform large-scale data collection and analysis, as well as monitoring news sources. Museums did not close in the numbers expected; on the contrary, closures were reduced from those seen in previous years and few were clearly related to the pandemic. But not all museums reopened once lockdowns were lifted. Many remained closed, and patterns of reopening were unevenly distributed across the sector.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Other
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Museum closure, covid-19, machine learning, website scraping, lockdowns, museum reopening
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
    Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Depositing User: Fiona Candlin
    Date Deposited: 14 Nov 2023 14:31
    Last Modified: 05 Dec 2023 15:06
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/52391

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