Stories from small museums is part of the wider Mapping Museums project, based at Birkbeck, University of London. The introduction begins by situating the book in relation to that wider research, specifically to data collection and definitions of museums. It outlines the 1980s and 1990s heritage debates and how they accounted for the increasing numbers of museums, showing how the Mapping Museums research verified some aspects of those debates and challenged others, particularly those arguments that linked the expansion of the museum sector to deindustrialisation. In doing so, the chapter provides the empirical evidence that underpins our research, and shows how the central questions arose. The second part of the chapter outlines methods: the reasons for choosing oral history, who is considered to be a museum founder, and how the respondents were selected. It covers issues of selection bias, discusses the importance of visiting museums in person, and draws attention to the gender and ethnicity of our respondents, noting how that subject is addressed within the text as a whole. The chapter closes by considering the co-construction of the oral history narrative and with an outline of the structure of the book.