Stories From Banting’s Basement: Week 10

Hello again! Last week was a pretty typical week here at Banting House. I spent most of my time managing the collection. I wrapped books, put objects away in storage, and covered tours when needed.  

Today, I wanted to talk about the research project I have been working on throughout the past nine weeks of my internship. As you may know, I am in the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College. As part of the program, students are asked to complete a research project during their internship that is useful to the place of internship and possibly to museum studies and practices.  

For this project, after discussion with the curator, it was decided I would update our social media handbook. Social media is an important part of museum work at Banting House as it allows us to share the story of the discovery of insulin on a larger scale and allows more people to engage with the topic. So, while it is important to preserve the story of each object by cataloguing, it is also important to share that story with the public like the one of “Teddy Ryder Rides Again” shown below.  

The first step of this project was to complete research. I reviewed social media guides to understand how to effectively use social media as well as the one at Banting House. I looked at The Digital Engagement Framework Workbook by Jim Richardson and Jasper Visser, The Social Media Handbook for Cultural Professionals by Medhavi Gandhi, and The ultimate social media for museums guide by Jenn Chen. To summarize, these guides taught me the importance of planning, and so I spent time creating a chart of posts to make and when. Here is an example of a chart I made for week 7 of my internship.  

The next step was to experiment. This was done by monitoring how people engage with our material, and what posts have the most engagement. So, for the past nine weeks, I have been collecting information on all our social media platforms including; views, likes, shares, and comments. I have also been experimenting with different activities like “What is it Wednesday?” and the crossword puzzle to see how people react. The post below had the most interaction.

The final step is implementation. I will be completing this step this week. I will take all the data gathered over the course of the nine weeks and implement them in our social media handbook for volunteers and future interns to use.  

With that all being said, as the public, I’d also like to hear from you. What do you want to see more of on our social media? What do you want to see less of? Please let me know if you have any comments so that Banting House can improve our social media.  

Again, I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about what goes on “behind-the-scenes” of a museum. See you next week!