Blogs from the Natural History Museum
Inspiring a love of the natural world
A rare and special rock, a piece of the upper mantle was donated to the NHM by researchers of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. This specimen is one piece of a large collection of mantle xenoliths that is being donated to the NHM.
Read on to learn about this rock and the message it sends from the deep. Continue reading “A rock from the deep | Curator of Petrology”
When I was at school I had my own geological museum under my bed. Aged 6 I took some of the first specimens in my collection to school for show and tell. This summer term I found myself doing the same at my 7 year old son Pelham’s school (thank you Natasha for volunteering me). I took some specimens on loan from the Museum’s handling collection and some of my favourite specimens from my original collection.
Read on to find out about the specimen that’s been on TV, the rock that is much lighter than it looks and where in Hintze Hall you can come do your own Key Stage 2 revision on Geology.
Continue reading “A boy with a museum under his bed | Curator of Micropaleontology”
There is a long tradition of art bringing dead things in museums to life. The Natural History Museum is full of specimens that give us windows into life in all its glory. But many artists give our collections and our ways of working new and unexpected lives. The Museum’s Art-Science Interest Group (ASIG) brings together the museum staff and artists (and in some cases these inhabit the same bodies) to explore the collections, and life, the universe and everything, through an artistic lens.
Continue reading “Contemporary art at the Natural History Museum”
European Natural Science collections contain around 1.5 billion specimens representing an estimated 55% of global collections and 80% of the worlds bio- and geo-diversity. Data derived from these collections underpin countless innovations, including tens of thousands of scholarly publications, products critical to our bio-economy, databases, maps and descriptions of scientific observations. Continue reading “Uniting Europe’s 1.5 billion specimens | Digital Collection Programme”
Dr Isabella Gordon (1901-1988), Crustacea specialist at the Natural History Museum 1928-1966.
A few weeks ago Catherine Booth made an appointment to view material in our reading room for the first time. Catherine has recently retired as Science Curator at the National Library of Scotland and will now able to spend time researching what had became an interest while she was working – the lives and careers of forgotten Scottish female scientists. One of these scientists, Isabella Gordon, drew her to visit the Library and Archives at the Natural History Museum. The following is Catherine’s guest blog.
Before the Museum exhibition about Colour and Vision closes on 6 November, I thought I should write a piece about some of nature’s most amazing eyes (their patterns and shapes). I’m talking of course about those belonging to flies – the most enigmatic of all species on the planet – and specifically all the species referred to as stalk-eyed flies.
My first experience of stalk-eyed flies came while I was carrying out fieldwork in Costa Rica over 10 years ago and it can probably go down as one of my favourite fieldwork moments. So what happened?
From 20-23 October, the Natural History Museum is taking part in the global WeDigBio event, which is all about digitising natural history collections around the world.
It will be a great opportunity to meet other natural history enthusiasts face-to-face (check out the event listing to find one near you, even if it isn’t here at the Museum), or engage with other volunteers online who will be helping us to transcribe specimen information, to set the data free!
Although our own hands-on Visiteering session during the WeDigBio event is now fully booked, you are welcome to register for the rest of our Visiteering scheme at any time.
The collection that we are profiling as part of WeDigBio focuses on a group of wasps called chalcids (pronounced ‘kal-sids’).
Ben Price and Douglas Russell blogged recently about presentations by Museum colleagues at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Protection of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) in Berlin, noting that delegates were passionate about the potential of digitisation to help us illustrate, research and understand our changing world. As well as presenting, we learned a lot from the other presenters and attendees, picking up some themes which are particularly relevant to our Digital Collections Programme (DCP).
Continue reading “Global digital collections | Digital Collections Programme”
Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
31st Annual Meeting June 20-25 2016, Berlin
Report by Ben Price and Douglas Russell
Museum collections are rapidly evolving in response to new research questions, innovations in digitisation and molecular analysis, and major challenges for society. It’s essential that museums work together to ensure that new ideas are exchanged and collaboration strengthened to make development more rapid and effective.
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) is an international society whose mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to society. The annual conference is one of the largest gatherings of museum professionals each year and it gives us museum and conservation folk an excellent opportunity to network and share the latest cutting-edge knowledge in our field.
Continue reading “Digitisation futures in Berlin | Digital Collections”
I’m currently in Dominica, collecting insects with Operation Wallacea but this isn’t the first time I’ve been to this beautiful country. Here’s a blog post I prepared earlier about my field trip last year…
I have just finished 4 weeks of fieldwork collecting insects in Dominica. I can’t really complain about that except that the fieldwork did not follow my usual routine. Generally when employed at Museum your fieldwork is either part of a general collecting trip hoping to find as much as possible (work with Dipterists Forum); part of a research-focused group (me collecting flies from Potatoes in Peru); or part of a consultancy project (Mosquitoes in Tajikistan). However this trip was different, I wasn’t marauding around the countryside with collector’s glee, this time I had to teach as well as collect.
It’s not the first time I have taught students. I lectured for a while before joining the museum and was involved in a tropical ecology field course in Costa Rica for several years. However that was university students and they were mostly master’s students who already were interested in Entomology. I had never taught or been involved with younger people – teenagers as I believe they are called. That had previously sounded like a mild form of torture! Could they concentrate? Would they even be interested?
Continue reading “Invertebrate hunting in Dominica | Curator of Diptera”
