Privacy notice for University of Dundee Museums

Who we are

University of Dundee Museum Services

Dundee DD1 4HN

We are Accredited as a public museum service in the UK (No 1704) and we are part of the University of Dundee, a Scottish Charity (No SC015096).

What information do we collect about you?

We collect personal data of five principal kinds:

1. Information about donors or vendors to our collections
   • If you have given or sold something to the University for our collections, we will want to keep a permanent record of this on our museum database in line with our Collections Management Policy & Procedures. This information is likely to include your name, title, gender, postal address, email address and/or phone number as well any other information you supply about the material we are acquiring from you.
2. Contact details for our mailing list
   • We hold a mailing list for marketing purposes. This comprises information that you will have given to us if you signed up to join this list, and will solely comprise your name, email address and (if you are not on email) postal address.
3. Contact details for our Eventbrite account
   • Most of our events are managed through the external website Eventbrite. If you book to attend one of our events using this method, your data will also be held by Eventbrite under the terms of their own privacy policy
4. Enquiries to the museum services
   • We receive several hundred enquiries every year from researchers and members of the public. We keep a copy of these for ten years after we have answered them, which will include your name, email or postal address and any other information that you may have included in the enquiry.
5. Artists and creators represented in the collections
   • We keep details on file about artists and other creators of material in our collections, which we need for research and interpretation. This is likely to include contact and biographical details and will most likely have been supplied by the artist/creator or have been publicly sourced online or from the telephone directory.

When we ask you to provide your personal information for any of the above we will let you know why we are asking, and how we will use your data, by directing you toward this notice.

What we do with your information

Depending on your relationship with the University of Dundee Museum Services, and the preferences you have indicated, the data we hold may be used by us for the following purposes: 

• Sending you promotional information by post or email. These types of communications will principally comprise invitations to exhibition openings and special events staged by Museum Services, and occasionally activities elsewhere that include material from our collections.
• Sending you surveys, which we may occasionally do to evaluate our activities.
• Updating enquiries – if you send us an enquiry we will endeavour to answer you within a few days, but we may at a later date discover more about the topic of your enquiry and get in touch with you again to give you more information.
• When exhibiting material from our collections we may in the accompanying interpretation include information on who we acquired it from and when, unless you tell us that you would prefer your donation to be anonymous.
• Reproduction requests – if you hold the copyright of artwork in our collection, we may contact you to ask permission to reproduce it.
• Reviewing our data – we may occasionally contact you to check if the details we have are up-to-date.

You can opt-out of any / all of our communications at any point simply by contacting us.

How we update, screen and analyse your information

We will occasionally review the records that we hold to ensure that your data is as accurate as possible. This may include contacting you directly, and we may also consult publicly available sources such as the internet and the telephone directory. In the case of former staff or students of the University of Dundee and its affiliate institutions, we may consult with colleagues in other departments to see if they hold relevant data.

Who we might share your information with

We do not disclose personal data to any third parties or external organisations. We may share your contact details with other departments of the University, such as the Alumni Office, but only if they are trying to contact you for a specific reason rather than for general marketing purposes.

How we keep your information secure

The University has implemented security procedures, rules and technical measures to protect the personal data that it has under its control from:

• unauthorised access
• improper use or disclosure
• unauthorised modification.

All of the University’s employees who have access to, and are associated with the processing of personal data, are legally obliged to respect the confidentiality of personal data.

Find out more about the overall data protection procedures at the University.

How can I access the information about myself, and correct that information?

You can ask us if we are keeping any personal data about you and you can also request to receive a copy of that personal data – this is called a Subject Access Request. To make a Subject Access Request you will need to provide adequate proof of identity before your request can be processed. 

At any time you may request that we delete or correct your personal information. If you wish to correct any information on you held by the University of Dundee Museum Services, simply contact us.

Changes to our Data Protection Guidelines

We regularly review these Guidelines and may make changes from time to time. Any changes made will be posted to the online version of this document, and will apply from the time we post them.