As a registrar in a previous life, I would often seek out practical manuals that would instruct staff in exhibition project management and delivery. Sharing internally produced manuals between like-minded registrars was often about as good as it got. Networks such as the Australian Registrars Committee or the Regional Touring Exhibition Initiative at Museums Australia (Victoria) were, and continue to be, invaluable for this kind of exchange.

So what is an exhibition? For me it was always when routine museum activities (curatorial, registration, conservation, public programs, etc.) collide with the practical and physical development and management of producing a display with all its complex components: display fabrication and the installation of objects, graphic panels, multimedia, followed by marketing and program delivery, to name just a few. If the exhibition travelled, add another challenging set of logistics: packing, transport, scheduling, insurance, and so on. For every 'complete' display on view to the public, there is a myriad of documentation, research, forms and negotiation that helps it arrive at that final destination in the gallery. Often years of labour result in just a few months of the final product, although the emergence of the online exhibition has served as a useful means of extending the longevity of an exhibition, as well as expanding on the story told by the physical exhibition.

It is hard to describe how to 'do' an exhibition. From one exhibition to another, there can be a different emphasis on the order of the tasks and the time given to them, the interdependency of tasks and teams, and the approval and delivery processes. In large organisations, when it comes to the art of producing, delivering, and touring a successful exhibition, there is inevitably a raft of multidisciplined staff, departments, systems and tools to ensure that all the necessary boxes are ticked on time and on budget.

Exhibitions: A practical guide for small museums and galleries by Georgia Rouette recognises that not all cultural institutions have a small army to do this work.

The book is divided into three parts, part one being on how to develop an exhibition. This is the main part of the publication and covers topics such as: what is the story being told, how to interpret the story and bring it to life through the display, how to create a timetable that gets all of the tasks done on time and on budget, what makes a good exhibition design and the options there are to get it made, how to promote the exhibition, how to develop programs for education and public audiences, how to maintain the exhibition so it always presents at its best and, finally, the deinstall and wrap-up at the end of the project and how to evaluate the success of the exhibition.

Part two focuses on the touring exhibition — the advantages of having one, and how to create an itinerary of venues. It looks at the travelling exhibition agreement or contract, and how to insure exhibitions when not at your own venue. Facilities reports, creating a travelling exhibition manual and how to pack and transport the exhibition and its supporting material safely conclude this section.

Part three provides the index to the CD-ROM that comes with the publication, and has a range of appendices including tips for developing budgets or writing submissions. Curiously, this is where the main advice on clearing copyright for the exhibition content is also presented. A list of relevant organisations and websites is always a helpful gathering of information, though now slightly out of date since the recent federal election and changes to some departmental names. A glossary of key terms used throughout the book is a useful guide to understanding the professional jargon we can all be guilty of, and a bibliography for further reading.

Rouette states 'that the first consideration (or rationale for the exhibition) is the exhibition's purpose, and the second is the audience it is aimed at'. Given the way the content in the book has been divided, I would add a third, and that is, 'is the exhibition being developed for just one venue or will it, or a modified version of it, be travelling to other venues?' Overall, the book creates an unnatural divide that suggests that some key exhibition tasks are only done for 'one venue' exhibitions or for travelling exhibitions but not necessarily both. Chapter 5, for example, is about design and production, but does not address the issue of portability or mobility as a design issue if the exhibition is intended to travel. Another point not covered is the concept of resizing an exhibition to better suit travelling or smaller venues, or how to deal with gaps in content if objects are not permitted to travel beyond the first venue. A follow-up on design and production in Part two of the book, which acknowledged the requirement of a new floorplan for each venue and how to 'fit' a travelling exhibition into each new space, would have been a more rounded treatment of this very practical side of exhibition delivery. The earlier an institution of any size has a grasp on these issues, the better the final product will be. A more logical division for this publication might have been to focus in one part on what makes a good exhibition from a content and audience perspective, and the second on how to go about physically designing it, building it and making it a reality for either one or many venues.

In her acknowledgements, Rouette says she is reminded of the generosity of our sector when writing her publication. And she is right. The CD-ROM that comes with the publication includes over 20 templates that cover most exhibition development and management scenarios, and is one of the most comprehensive that is currently available. This resource alone makes this publication a worthy purchase for any small museum. This kind of sharing has always been a valuable part of our networks and it is nice to see it more formally available in such an attractive package.

Catherine Belcher is the regional manager of the Western Australian Museum in Geraldton.