Tag: Evolve magazine

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Delving in to Dippy – using the Archives to research our favourite colleague | Library and Archives

For Explore Your Archive Week Jordan Risebury-Crisp, Internal Communications Officer at the Museum, recalls how the Hintze Hall redevelopment prompted his own adventure in to the Museum’s past.

The Museum has seen a number of changes in the last few years. In 2015 it was announced that the much beloved and iconic Diplodocus cast, affectionately called Dippy, was to be removed from his position in the Museum’s Hintze Hall where he had stood proudly on display, greeting visitors as they arrived at the Museum for over four decades.

Black and white photograph of the Hintze Hall, taken from the main staircase looking toward the main entrance. Four lines of glass display cabinets line the main floor leading from the stairs towards the entrance. The specimen nearest the photographer on the second row is an adult adult and is facing away towards the entrance.
View of Hintze Hall looking South towards the main entrance, 1919 (PH/3/1/1827)

Following Dippy’s departure the entire hall would then undergo a multi-million pound transformation, involving renovation, re-imagining of displays and bringing our Museum into the 21st century; a tough feat to accomplish considering the hall has been open to the public from 1881.

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A year in review for #ExploreArchives | Library and Archives

It’s been a busy and varied year for the Museum’s Archives and Records Management service. There have been some staff changes, but our team of two staff (Kate Tyte and Ruth Benny) and some volunteers have still managed to answer 455 enquiries, host 133 visits and retrieve 955 items from the stores for our researchers to use.

Photo showing Kate Tyte seated at the back of the Archives with drawers open in front of her
Kate Tyte, Museum Archivist, working away in the stores

But just what are all these people researching? We’ve had enquiries about the Loch Ness Monster, the Challenger expedition, archaeological excavations, genealogy, meteorites, a botanical expedition to Peru in the 1950s, a model of a woolly rhinoceros, the origin and manufacture of glass jars for wet specimens in the 1800s, the Piltdown man hoax, UFOs (yes, you read that correctly) and taxidermied dogs.

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Latest edition of evolve out now | Library and Archives

Hot off the press is the autumn 2015 edition of the Museum Members’ magazine evolve and for those who love the Museum’s paper collections there is plenty to read about.

Image of the front cover showing a photo from the latest Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition
The cover of the latest edition of evolve

Natural Histories and the mandrake

The Natural Histories collaboration between the Museum and BBC Radio 4 over the last few months included the story of nightshade plant family and in particular the role of the mandrake in early medicine and its depiction in in botanical herbal illustrations such as those held in our collections.

New Bauer Brothers art exhibition in our Images of Nature Gallery and accompanying publication

Special Collections Librarian Paul Cooper introduces our exhibition of the botanical and zoological artwork of Franz and Ferdinand Bauer. The exhibition opened on 7 November 2015 and runs until 2017. All of the artwork by the brothers on display during this period comes from the collections of the Museum Library.

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