Tag: Book

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Patrick Russell’s 18th century volume of Indian serpent skins | Library and Archives

Museum paper conservator Konstantina Konstantinidou handles a large number of  items from the Library and Archives collection each year. Each object has differing needs and can offer a variety of challenges in regard to the work needed to be done. In this blog, Konstantina introduces us to an 18th century volume with rather unexpected contents. Continue reading “Patrick Russell’s 18th century volume of Indian serpent skins | Library and Archives”

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How Lego lends a hand in digitising 300 year old Herbarium books | Digital Collections Programme

The Museum is on a mission to digitise 80 million specimens. We want to mobilise the collections to give the global community access to this unrivaled historical, cultural, geographical and taxonomic resource.

The Sloane Herbarium at the Natural History Museum, London
The Sir Hans Sloane Herbarium in the Darwin Centre Cocoon at the Museum in London

Carrying out pilot projects helps us to establish bespoke digital capture workflows on areas of the collections. Mercers Trust funded a small scale pilot project to digitise the more difficult to image herbarium specimens from the Samuel Browne Volumes of the Sloane Herbarium that contain specimens of medicinal plants form India. Dr Steen Dupont from the Museum’s Digital Collection programme has been leading on this project. Continue reading “How Lego lends a hand in digitising 300 year old Herbarium books | Digital Collections Programme”

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Mapping the Earth: the bicentennial of the William Smith map | Shop at the Museum

A great icon of British geology is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year. The William Smith map or ‘A Delination of the strata of England and Wales with part of Scotland’ brought revolutionary change to the way we think about the structure of the Earth and vastly advanced the science of geology.

As the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival (1-3 May) approaches, where this giant of geology will be celebrated, the Museum’s online shop takes a closer look at the man behind the map and what inspired him.

200 years old in 2015, the William Smith map changed the face of geology
200 years old in 2015, the William Smith map changed the face of geology

Who was William Smith?

Born in the Oxfordshire hamlet of Churchill in 1769, William Smith was the son of a blacksmith. Even though he did well at school there was never any thought of him attending university due to his family’s poverty.

Continue reading “Mapping the Earth: the bicentennial of the William Smith map | Shop at the Museum”