Novel ways of communicating museum pest monitoring data: practical implementation

In a bid to improve communication of data relating to the conservation of cultural heritage collections, the authors present a solution and technique that makes analysis and communication of pest monitoring data more user-friendly. This novel technique includes calculation of the new Pest Occurrence Index (POI), which integrates recorded pest occurrence numbers over number of pest monitors and room size, decreasing unintentional bias introduced by previously used analytical techniques. Calculation of POI requires that contextual information such as type of collection affected, room size, and number of pest monitors deployed also need to be reported during pest monitoring to enable meaningful data interpretation. Trials at National Museum Cardiff (NMC) using different types of illustrations, based on the newly developed POI and with messages targeted at specific recipients, indicated that risk perception based on visualisations is affected by user background, expertise in relation to pest management and familiarity with certain types of graphical representations. The introduction of novel and comprehensive forms of graphical data interpretation at NMC, including greater focus on developing visualisations with specific messages for different target audiences, resulted in increased staff buy-in and willingness to assist with pest management and a demonstrable decrease in pest occurrences in collections areas of the museum.