ISO 18461 International Museum Statistics published

ISO 18461 has been published in March 2016. Work on this standard started in 2012. Its topic is museum statistics. Much of the work is based on what EGMUS has achieved in the last years, and will be carried out in close cooperation with EGMUS.

The new standard has a similar aim as, for example, the existing ISO 2789 "International Library Statistics" (since 1974) or ISO/TR 20983 "Performance indicators for electronic library performance" (since 2003). The newly finished standard provides the framework for Museum Statistics on an international scale, ie. the best possible comparability of museum statistics data from countries around the world. For this purpose ISO 18461:2016(en) has built a structure, and definitions, for the components which are relevant for museum statistics: types of museums, features and services of the museum for its visitors, etc. and the methodology of how to count them and how to establish reliable figures. This international standard thus serves also as a basis for building and harmonising the national museum statistics questionnaires.

Following the publication of ISO 18461 the working group under the coordination of Prof. Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (Germany) started the work on the new task ISO/CD 21246 "key indicators for museums" in order to agree on reliable and reasonable indicators for certain museum features and operations.