Five museums, the Fedderwardersiel National Park House Museum (Lower Saxony), the Ovelgönne Craft Museum (Lower Saxony), the Lötschental Museum (Kippel, Switzerland), the Angeln/Unewatt Landscape Museum (Schleswig-Holstein) and the Werratal Museum Gerstungen (Thuringia), have joined forces with the Institute of Material Culture at the University of Oldenburg to form a research network. What the selected museums have in common is that they see themselves as "new local history museums" and have a special relationship to landscape and its representation in these museums. The project is scheduled to run for three years. The research project will focus on investigating the specific types of knowledge production that characterise local history museums. Of particular interest are the type, timing and intention of knowledge production and the associated forms and processes of collection formation. In principle, young researchers should work in a team with experienced museologists on site. In this context, all those involved in knowledge production in the museums are important, which is why their active involvement in the research process plays a central role. Another concern of the project is the sustainable promotion of co-operation and networking between the participating museums.
For this reason, the project process is made transparent to all participants in the form of participatory accompanying research, which is intended to initiate processes of exchange between theory and museum practice that lead to reflection and further development of research in and about local history museums. In addition, the project addresses questions about the verifiability of the quality of museum work at local history museums, which are increasingly being raised by small museums. The aim of the cooperating museums and the researchers involved
is to further develop the institution of the local history museum in a self-confident and productive manner. The specific aim of the research is to identify and analyse object collections specific to the New Heritage Museums and the associated forms of presentation, through which
statements on nature/region/homeland, gender and ethnicity are implicitly and explicitly conveyed. On the basis of this analysis, a handout is to be developed that will provide small local history museums for the first time with a set of tools developed within a scientific research context
for qualitative self-evaluation and for reflecting on their own forms of presentation. Regular working meetings with an advisory board made up of recognised scientists and museum experts will serve to ensure quality.