The new Ceramics Study Galleries opened to the public at the Victoria and Albert Museum today and I went to have a scout around. They are packed floor-to-ceiling with the V&A’s massive collection, acting like a “live storage” system.

Here’s an artist’s impression because my phone ran out of battery:

V&A Ceramics Study Galleries.V&A Ceramics Study Galleries.

Because the objects are packed so tightly, allowing little scope for labelling of individual items, other information sources have been provided. Digital interactives allow you to search the Ceramics Collection from “terminals” in the galleries and to my delight, the case labels and even the walls provide text to search for using the museum’s Search the Collections web site.

Stencilled search terms on a museum wallWho put that there?

There’s decent public wi-fi in the galleries and I would hope to see people using laptops, tablets and our mobile search on phones to research the vast collection.

Working in a museum web team, it feels warm and fuzzy to see our work in the digital space being written on the walls of the building.