New technology will improve access to museum’s collection

Museum news latest update from David Crane ...

Here at Llangollen Museum we are delighted to announce that we have been successful in securing funding to allow us to improve access to, and care of, items in our collection via digitisation and conservation. The £42,778 award is from the Welsh Government.

The programme will allow us to employ exciting new technology to create new displays in the Museum, as well as conserving and recording more of our artefacts and improving the information that we can make available online.

The main new display in the Museum will be a Dreamoc ‘holographic’ display cabinet. This will allow us to show 3D imagery of items in our collection that are not normally on display. We hope to have the first ones showing later in August. Alongside that will be Victorian stereographic viewers. These were the 19th century equivalent of Meta Quest, and will allow visitors to view 3D photographs of scenes around Llangollen, that we hold in our collection, as they were in the late 1800s.

Another new addition will be a touchscreen timeline display, available in the Museum and on our website, helping visitors to understand where items in our collection, and local landmarks, originated – both in time and space.

Importantly, we will also purchase a Braille printer, letting us make all of our display material available for those with visual impairments.

We will increase the number of images of items in the Museum database by over 1,000. We will also purchase a new 3D photogrammetric scanner, allowing us to add more than 100 items to our 3D digital archive. A new collections management PC will be purchased, helping us to future proof our collections management system. Prior to digitisation, selected items will have critical restoration work carried out.

Finally, we will digitise microfilm records that we hold of the Llangollen Advertiser newspaper, between 1920 and 1945 (that are not yet available digitally), enabling everyone to access this vital source of information. The digitised versions will be made available on our website, and given to the National Library of Wales to be included on the Welsh Newspapers Online web pages, alongside the existing 50 years that they already have.

Our next talk will be on July 29, when Andy Harrop-Smith will give a presentation about The Folklore of Birds. In August there will be no talk, but on September 30 Professor Howard Williams will give a talk entitled What’s Watt’s Dyke? Do come along and enjoy finding out about these diverse subjects, and keep an eye on our social media for announcements about future talks. All talks start at 7:00pm at the Museum. Tickets are £3 at the door with refreshments provided. Do get the dates in your diaries - we hope to see you there!

The next exhibition in the Janet Wakefield Gallery at the Museum will start at the beginning of August and will be an exhibition of paintings by the Llangollen Art Group. They will be followed in September by a display by the Pen y Cae Art Group and then by local artist Tricia Lea in October.

For all of the latest information about what is happening at the Museum, do keep an eye on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/p/Llangollen-Museum-100057657969751/.

Finally, as with many voluntary organisations, we need more volunteers, especially to cover the weekends. If you want to be more involved with the history of the area, and become a volunteer at the Museum, please contact our manager Gill Smith at gilliansmith2@hotmail.co.uk or on 07516 023524.

* After a very successful first six months, the Clwyd and Dee Valley Young Archaeologists Club (YAC), finished for the summer holidays. The session in July focused upon The Pillar of Eliseg, Offa's Dyke and the Bronze Age burial mound beneath the Pillar. 

The youngsters were taught about finds from the burial cairn and how to record them. Arrangements are underway to take the group to the open day at the Bryneglwys dig in August and to host members of that dig for a finds’ session. We are in the process of arranging the sessions for the next six months beginning in September, dates to be announced. 

We are excited to have storyteller Andy Harrop-Smith joining our team in the near future. Please email Gill Smith on gilliansmith2@hotmail.co.uk for more information and membership details. For details of the themes for upcoming meetings please look at our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/share/14TB2VbYbL6/.

Our window displays change every month. August will see a display about medicine in Llangollen, followed by a display of medieval items from our collection in September. October will feature the Ladies of Llangollen, November will focus on Remembrance Day and December will celebrate Christmas.

Inside the Museum, the item of the month for August will be a stone Tudor head, discovered at Pentre Hall in Bronygarth near Chirk, home to a branch of the Edwards family in the 17th century. The type of stone and the appearance of the head, along with the connection of the Edwards family to Valle Crucis, make it possible that the head originated at the Abbey.