Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Welcome to the July edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.
A monthly blog series featuring the latest on where to go, what to see and do in the natural history sector including jobs, exhibitions, conferences, and training opportunities. We are keen to hear from you if you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest, please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.
Sector News
Geological Collections Group – Dinosaur trackways field workshop
There is still time to register for the GCG Dinosaur Trackways field workshop, happening later this month on the 24th July.
This one-day field workshop will teach participants how to clean out large sauropod footprints and, take measurements of both isolated prints and entire trackways. This is a practical field workshop, with hands on experience of working with dinosaur trackways. For this reason, participants must be able to move across uneven ground unaided.
Registration closes July 18th. You can see a session timetable and details for registration here: Dinosaur Trackways Field Workshop – Geological Collections Group
Transmitting Science Online Course – Geometric Morphometrics in R
Registration is still open for the upcoming Transmitting Science Geometric Morphometrics course with Transmitting Science, hosted by Dr. Julien Claude (Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution de Montpellier, France).
Concepts in geometric morphometrics will be taught using a series of original data sets and working in R for solving a series of tasks. The course will start with an introduction to R and will rapidly go into shape analysis with measurements, landmark data and outlines. The participants are welcome to bring their own data and problems so that we may find R solutions.
The course begins on July 28th and runs until August 5th. Details on timetables, course structure, pricings, academic credits, and registration can be found on the course page here.
NatSCA Lunchtime Chats
The new lunchtime chats are for members only and run on the last Thursday of every month.
This series is supposed to be informal; no fancy equipment is needed; it will be put out over the NatSCA Zoom platform and there is no fixed format. For those who want to take part please email training@natsca.org to put forward your idea; if a stable internet connection for what you want to achieve is tricky, we can put up a pre-recorded video and then speakers can jump in at the end for the discussion.
Bring your sandwiches and a cuppa and we hope to see you on the day! All members will have received a link to join via Zoom (the same link works for all sessions) – if you haven’t, get in touch with membership@natsca.org.
Where to Visit
Monkeys: Our Primate Family at National Museums Scotland
Running now through November 30th, a new natural science exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland brings you face to face with the rarest and most endangered primates on Earth. Explore the remarkable lives of our primate relatives and discover how they have adapted to survive in different habitats. This is the first exhibition of its kind to show primate taxidermy specimens behaving as they would in the wild.
Details and bookings can be found here.
Bees: A Story of Survival at National Museums Liverpool
The ongoing exhibition at the World Museum, Liverpool has been extended and will run until September 28th.
This exhibition is a story of 120 million years of adaptation and survival. Journey into the fascinating world of bees in ways that have never been experienced before. A soundscape connects you to a live beehive, constantly changing in response to the activity of the colony. Discover the wonder of these tiny creatures through interactives, sculpture, projection and light.
Details and bookings can be found here.
What to Read
We have two more wonderful offerings for you from our very own NatSCA Blog this month.
The first: Planet Ocean: Using Local Collections to Celebrate Global Climate Action, is from Sarah Marden, Curator of Natural History at The Box, Plymouth. The blog explores the recent exhibition by the same name with details on the themes and goals of the showing, insights into communicating such a broad and complex topic effectively, and details on the sustainable nature of the exhibition development, from display materials to artist collaborations.
We also have a great deep dive from Jazmine Miles Long on Bark Tanning Skins into Leather for Taxidermy – A Sustainable, Natural and Non-harmful Alternative to Commercial Tanning Products?
Jazmine breaks down the development of their techniques and practice in taxidermy and how it has changed and evolved over the years. This blog is packed full of interesting details and images of the various experiments exploring different natural tanning methods and finishes with a helpful breakdown of the benefits and limitations for each.
Where to Work
Natural Sciences Curator (Collections Projects) – National Museum Cardiff
An exciting new job opportunity in the Natural Sciences Department at Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales. This role is to undertake a variety of curatorial projects, and you will work with curators and collections across the department in all our sections – geology, botany and zoology. In this role you undertake curation, documentation and other collection care work. This will include retrospective documentation on collections and updating records on our collections management systems.
For more information, check out the webpage: https://nmwtest.ciphr-irecruit.com/Applicants/vacancy/2500/Natural-Sciences-Curator-Collections-Projects
Before You Go…
If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org. Similarly, if you have something to say about a current topic, or perhaps you want to tell us what you’ve been working on, we welcome new blog articles so please drop Jen an email if you have anything you would like to submit.
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