Museum vivum. The Czech Open-Air Museum Journal
Museum vivum. The Czech Open-Air Museum Journal is a peer-reviewed scholarly magazine intended for the professional public from the sphere of open-air museums and institutions of a similar character (vernacular architecture monuments, agricultural museums, archaeological open-air museums, technical monuments, eco-museums, etc.). The Journal is published in hard-copy, periodically, once a year. Articles are subject to approval by the editorial board. Individual texts are proof-read, and studies undergo a revision process and are supplemented with an English language summary. The texts are published mainly in Czech, Slovak, Polish and English. The Journal is published by the Methodological Centre for Open-Air Museums at the National Open-Air Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm.
Museum vivum follows up on previously published, non-periodical compendia from conferences held at the Wallachian Open-Air Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm – four volumes of the compendium Agricultura carpatica (from the years 1973, 1981, 1985 and 1987) and three volumes of the compendium Museum vivum (from the years 1985, 1987 and 1988). The first volume of the revived compendium was published by the Wallachian Open-Air Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, bearing as volume I in 2005. In 2016, i.e. after the transformation from the Wallachian Open-Air Museum compendiumtothe Czech Open-Air Museum Journal, Museum vivum began its second decade of publication.
Museum vivum publishes original theoretic, material and methodological papers, studies and reports concerning social science disciplines (ethnology, history, archaeology, museology, archiving, psychology, history of art etc.), technical fields (historic preservation, architecture, material engineering etc.) natural science (agrarian culture, biology, landscaping etc.), museum work (research, documentation, collection management, guiding, presentation, interpretation, promotion, marketing etc.) primarily from the sphere of open-air museums and similar types of institution. This is part of an effort to support an interdisciplinary approach in this area.
Museum vivum contains specialised articles presenting the activities of:
- Open-air museums in the Czech Republic and abroad (Český svaz muzeí v přírodě / Czech Association of Open-Air Museums – ČSMP, Únia slovenských múzeí v prírode / Slovak Union of Open-Air Museums, AEOM etc.),
- National Open-Air Museum – Wallachian Open-Air Museum in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm (Methodological Centre for Open-Air Museums)
Specialists in various academic fields relating to open-air museum activities according to the following scheme:
1) Studies and materials, 2) Musealia, 3) Personages, 4) Reports on the activities of museums, conferences, exhibitions, excursions, 5) Reviews of publications and exhibitions
The National Open-Air Museum also facilitates the publication of extensive monographic works, seminar and conference speeches etc., concerning the topic of open-air museums as an independent edition of specialist publications.