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This is a draft guideline for the structure of museum articles on Wikipedia, drawing on good current articles and updated by WikiProject Museums. It could be used for non-museum 'collections' with minor modifications.
These recommendations aim to help writers include all relevant information, and to get an article to good or featured article status. Section order: The order and structure of sections is optional; history, design, and curatorial exhibits often come first, but all may vary case by case. |
This project page serves as a guideline for writing quality and standardised articles about museums. As you can see by browsing the diversity of articles about museums, the suggestions on this page are merely guidelines.
Museums which are also on the National Register of Historic Places, Architectural monuments, or Culture and Arts institutions can benefit from the guidelines of projects dedicated to each of those categories.
Writing about the smallest of museums can be difficult due to the lack of source material, especially when compared with major museums. Some of the smallest museums may form part of a village, town, rural municipality, civil parish, county or council ward.
Small notable museums could have their own articles, but if there is no more than a couple of paragraphs that could be said about the museum it may be best practice to merge the museum article into the location article.
General guidelines: references are a requirement of any article, preferably inline citations. Alternate headings are listed and referred to as "Optional headings" below. Section titles should generally not start with the word The (see WP:HEAD), nor repeat the name used in the title of the article.
The name of the article should be the current, formal title of the museum. Other accepted names can be indicated in the first sentence with bold text. If the article name differs from a listing the listing name should usually appear as one of those bolded alternative names. If there are multiple places with the same name, the article should usually be entitled Name (City, State), or Name (City, Province). For disambiguation of museums, see the Naming conventions.
The common infobox for museums: ((Infobox Museum))
((Infobox museum | name = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | logo = | logo_upright = | logo_alt = | logo_caption = | image = | image_upright = | alt = | caption = | map_type = | map_relief = | map_size = | map_caption = | coordinates = <!-- ((Coord)) --> | former_name = | established = <!-- ((Start date|YYYY|MM|DD|df=y)) --> | dissolved = <!-- ((End date|YYYY|MM|DD|df=y)) --> | location = | type = | accreditation = | key_holdings = | collections = | collection_size = | visitors = | founder = | executive_director = | leader_type = | leader = | director = | president = | ceo = | chairperson = | curator = | architect = | historian = | owner = | publictransit = | car_park = | parking = | network = | website = <!-- ((URL|example.com)) --> | embedded = ))
The introductory section should not have a section heading. It should introduce the article about the museum, serving as a concise overview of the article, establishing context, summarizing the most important points, and explaining why the subject is interesting or notable.
This section should follow the guidelines specified under WP:LEAD. Additionally, a couple of items should be included in the lead section for city articles, including:
Names of the museum should be given in each of the state or province / countries official languages dependent upon if it is a national, state or provincial museum. Pronunciation of the museum name should be in IPA as per Help:IPA/English, though can also be in the main local language(s) if thought helpful.
Two 'good article' criteria:
This section provides a narrative of the museum's history. This is particularly relevant for museums that were founded as such. Museums that are preserved buildings or vessels that had their own history before becoming a museum may have a number of historical sections first describing their existence and use before their preservation. (Ex: Manzanar)
Topics that can be covered include, but are not limited to:
Most libraries will have books on local museum history. Be wary of loose interpretations, especially when using internet or promotional sources.
History sections can easily become long with more detail than appropriate for a general overview. While there is no strict rule on how long a section may be, as a general rule of thumb, more than 10 paragraphs or the use of subsection headings might indicate that it should be accompanied by a History of _ main article (using the main template). Describe the minimum of what is required to understand where the museum and community has come from and let the History of _ article give the details.
You may note here where the museum is located / how it came to be there, and any relevant connecting infrastructure, geology, topography. This could include distance to a notable capital, city or town which made an impression upon the museum historically.
This bit of history can often be included in the lead or history section. If there is controversy or a major story about the name, that can justify a subsection header or section on its own. It could also be titled as etymology or toponymy. If the museum has a nickname, another name or a name in another recognised regional or national language, this can also be presented here.
If the museum is located in a restored residence or restored building, a separate section on their life and use of the building is appropriate. The section can be named after them, if it was a single family. Notable persons from the settlement if they satisfy Wikipedia:Notability (people), and any notable births, and residents in the museum's early history can all be included where applicable.
Do not use a list format in this section. Please write this as prose, reference each person, and avoid the word "famous".
If this is a short section, and not the central focus of the museum, it can be a subsection under "History". If the museum is primarily a depiction of the life of various early residents, there could be multiple sections here for each era of resident.
One or more sections about aspects of design for which the museum is famous. These can be consolidated into a single section, or a series of top-level sections, or subsections, depending on the importance of design to the identity and use of the museu, and the relative importance of each component. Potential topics to include:
Use and design of rooms in the museum interior. Plan or layout of rooms as related to exhibits, or historical architectural layout for original building use. May be named Design, Galleries, Interior and exhibitions, Collections, or Exhibitions. Permanent, travelling or rotating, present and past collections can also be mentioned.
This section can relate the size of the collection, its size relative to other collections of its kind, and highlight some key items in the collection along with providing some context for their significance. On the other hand, some museums, such as Kenilworth Castle are more about the history of the location and the building(s) than about the contents.
There are a number of options for presenting the items on exhibit. The predominant style among GA museum articles[1] is to provide paragraphs of prose explaining the collections, and a few paragraphs explaining the significance of a few key items. Pictures of key items are interspersed. For example, Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals, Kentucky Railway Museum, and Indianapolis Museum of Art follow this pattern. Due to their extensive collections, British Library and Musée du Louvre each highlight several collections with their own sections in this style.
An alternate technique is to present a tidy list of highlights, like National Gallery. In this case, there is more detail on the collection in its own article.
If some of the collection is indoors and some outdoors, interpret this guideline loosely so as to group items appropriately in the article.
If the exterior grounds of the building is also designated and used for the museum, then describe their applicable use appropriately.
How the museum is currently overseen and preserved, including information about its management and operations. Potential topics to include:
Board of directors, curator, partners, governance, body or authority responsible for management. Any funding arrangements can be mentioned. How the museum is owned or governed today, is it part of the national government, a non profit organisation, does it have a board of directors? Have there been changes in the owners, and what was the former owner/ status of the museum? Note any grants, or logos adopted by the museum
Economic impact, economic expenditures, publications, newsletters, educational, or research programs.
Ongoing or notable preservation or regeneration efforts, and how the museum is handling them while providing some level of public access.
If there are specific and notable future plans that don't fall under general operations, referencing published material about that development, this can have its own section.
This material should all be mentioned briefly in the lead or history sections. For large museums, there may additionally be enough detail to have a separate section about how the museum is used.
Tours, celebrations, anniversaries, visitors per year could all be in this section.
Notes on transport infrastructure in and around the museum can include
Other related points of interest, war memorials, plaques, monuments, natural landmarks can be mentioned here.
Awards received by the museum, in its current form, or historically.
(Optional heading. Alternately, simply: "In film" or "In literature" if only one is applicable.)
(Optional heading.)
NOTE: Reference sections may follow a number of styles, including separate "Footnote" and "Further reading" sections; please refer to WP:REF for more information. List all sources used in building the article in this section. Instructions for doing this are at Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Verifiability. Either title is acceptable for this section, but not both together (see WP:CITE#How to present citations for details).
Some examples can be found in the following featured articles:
A brief listing of books and external sources that are not directly cited within the article (under references), but might be of interest to the reader.
External links should be added only rarely, and in accordance with the guidelines found in WP:EL. Consequently, this section should only rarely be found in most articles. In particular, the use of links as described in WP:SPAM should always be avoided. Always restrict external links to the WWW to the External Links section, or within an appropriately tagged reference.
A link to some of the official websites should be provided here, such as the official museum home page. Providing links to every commercial, educational, or other entity within the museum exhibits is not appropriate for this section. Information about such entities should be written into the article, with links to Wikipedia articles on notable entities. Remember, Wikipedia is not a linkfarm, and excessive lists of links on articles will be removed.
If any links are deemed appropriate for this section, they should always be accompanied by an appropriate description of (a) what they are, (b) their justification, and (c) the date on which they were added in the form "Accessed: 7 July 2007" (WP:EL#External links section gives some more information about this).
External links used as a form of verification for facts found in the text of the article should be treated as normal references, e.g., cited by enclosing them in <ref>...</ref> tags and conforming to the style of web-based references, which also includes a "Retrieval date" component. They should not be added to this section (see WP:EL#References and citation). Wikipedia:Citation templates gives useful information about what should be entered and the order in which the separate components of a web-citation should appear.
COORDINATE TEMPLATE
Coordinates, usually in the infobox but sometimes added when there is no infobox, are directly useful to some readers to find a given location and provide data for region maps.
Latitude and longitude should be present only once and linked to the mapping services by using either ((Infobox Museum)) or ((coord|lat|long|type:city(population)_region:ISO3166-code|display=title))
((coord|41|48|36|N|87|36|58|W|name=Abbott, Robert S., House))
or decimal coordinates, as in ((coord|37.34826|N|79.26495|W|name=Thomas Jefferson's Poplar House)). For region codes, use either a two character ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code, or an ISO 3166-2 region code.
To get correct coordinates for a place, if you know it, you can use various satellite view systems. The Geolocator tool, at http://tools.freeside.sk/geolocator/geolocator.html which uses a referenced map from various sources, is particularly nice for providing a wikipedia-ready coordinates item, ready for cutting and pasting. As far as i can tell, though, it does not allow you to look up a street address. But you may look up a street address in [Google maps for further assistance. See Wikipedia:Obtaining geographic coordinates for tips.
WIKI - SISTERLINKS
You may use ((Sisterlinks)), or other individual sister project templates, to link to some of wikipedia's sister project sites that might have pertinent information on the museum.
TEMPLATES, CATEGORIES
Use the best sub-category, not the top most category - be as specific as possible. Add appropriate local geographical as well as museum categories, and check for local or museum templates as well to add to the footer of the article.
Add as many other categories that fit. Some categories that are common for museums are:
" (non-breaking space) should be typed between numbers and units, and other numerical/non-numerical components, e.g., "10 miles", "Boeing 747"The above is a compilation from a variety of wikipedia guideline sources on other wikiprojects (such as WP NRHP, WP NRHP SG, WP UK, WP US, and WP Arch ) adapted for use by WP Museums