FAQs
Is the museum open to the public?
1
In the general sense - yes. Everything available to the public is presented here on this website and through our searchable online catalogue hosted by The Collecting Bug. We do not have a physical space open to the public at this stage. Our current philosophy is that we are a virtual museum - but this has advantages! You can visit us from anywhere at anytime!
Where are your collections sourced?
2
We have overviews of the nature and origins of our collections on the Collections page.
What makes you different?
3
Our Museum comprises several different departments, whose only uniting feature is that they were collected by the eponymous Mr Bowden. We are unbounded by institutional history, collecting agendas, or other things which govern most physical museums.
How is the collection catalogued?
4
Ironically for a ‘virtual’ museum, we are interested in and engaged with several forms of entirely analogue cataloguing. The collections of the Antiques, Art & Anthropology and Natural History Departments are entered into physical Register Books and each artefact or specimen has its details written by hand onto an Index File Card. These file cards are sorted in boxes according to the physical storage location of the artefact, enabling them to be searched. Both the Register Books and File Cards record details such as the artefact’s name, source (donor or place of collection), date of acquisition, collector, subcollection, and remarks as to features or condition. There are separate Register Books and File Card series for each of the Museum’s departments. Systems like these have been used by museums around the world for centuries - and the nostalgic charm and physicality of the registration process by these methods is what attracts our staff to using them.