Author Archives for Natural Sciences Collections Association

NatSCA Digital Digest – July

What Should I Read?

On the palaeo-blog by ever prolific palaeoartist Mark Witton, a new piece called Ricardo Delgado’s Age of Reptiles at 25: a palaeontological retrospective looks back on the Age of Reptiles comic series, that first appeared in 1993. It is full of palaeoartistry insights, entertaining musings, and images from both Witton and the comic series.

The Geological Curators’ Group blog is a hive of activity with new content now coming out fortnightly. The latest article, published a couple of days ago, is a review of the very popular and highly successful pyrite workshop that took place at the Natural History Museum, London. With really useful content, the article by Deborah Hutchinson, Curator of Geology at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, is called Pyrite Oxidation: Where Are We Now?

Some fantastic new dinosaur skeletons, with thought-provoking growth rings within the bones…., are currently being unearthed in Argentina. Read about this Triassic site in the following article from the BBC; Fossil of ‘first giant’ dinosaur discovered in Argentina.

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We Are All Experts…

I recently attended a conference where one of the speakers happily declared ‘We are all experts’. I have heard this said a few times, but feel it misunderstands what an expert is, devalues expertise and misses out the joy and benefits of learning new things.

Maybe I would say this wouldn’t I? After all, I am employed as an expert in my field as Curator of Earth Sciences at Manchester Museum and am a NatSCA committee member. But there are good reasons why experts are important and are vital to museums being relevant to society and changing people’s lives for the better.

Installing Manchester Museum’s Nature’s Library gallery showcasing how the collection is used. © The University of Manchester, Manchester Museum.

Everyone brings their opinions, feelings, and ideas about collections, and experts are no exception but crucially experts also bring the knowledge, ideas and understanding of those who have gone before, many of which have been rigorously scientifically tested and challenged.

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Transforming Scientific Natural History 3D Data into an Immersive Interactive Exhibition Experience

Interspectral is a Swedish company that provides an interactive exhibition system called Inside Explorer using 3D volumetric scanning, such as CT and micro CT, real-time graphics visualisation and a large touch table to enable gallery visitors to interactively explore natural history subjects using modern science techniques.

Inside Explorer is today used at museums worldwide, for example the British Museum, Natural History Museum London, Utah Natural History Museum, Denver Museum of Science and Nature and many more.

A recent collaboration between Interspectral and Wakehurst; Kew’s wild botanic garden for their Millennium Seed Bank Visitor Atrium, has resulted in some spectacular results. These can be seen in the specially commissioned Secret Structures exhibition. The Inside Explorer system at the exhibition enables visitors to the Millennium Seed Bank to not only marvel at plants, but to learn from them and to understand our need to protect them. The Inside Explorer Digital Table invites them to peel back the layers of intriguing, scanned objects from RBG Kew’s collections; a Brazil nut, a piece of oak, an orchid and a carved walnut shell.

© Kew Gardens

Wakehurst and Interspectral worked with London’s Natural History Museum’s imaging labs to micro CT scan the subjects for the exhibits. These were then produced for exhibition by Interspectral and Wakehurst.

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So You Think You Know About Dinosaurs?

Ben Garrod’s new book series could be a hit with audiences of all ages.

So you think you know about dinosaurs? The evocative title perfectly reflects the contradictory upbeat attitude and challenging facts of Ben Garrod‘s series of dinosaur books for children. Each book is focused on a different dino species and is chock full of hard facts and science aimed at enthralling, teaching and challenging kids to think for themselves. While at an absolutely ANCIENT age of 23 years I am perhaps not the demographic that Ben is aiming at, nonetheless I immensely enjoyed these charming books and surprised myself by learning a lot about Triceratops, Diplodocus and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

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Meet the Committee – Jennifer Gallichan

What is your role on the NatSCA committee?

I am new to the NatSCA committee so am just starting to feel my way and find what my role might be as an Ordinary Member. I have considered joining the committee for many years, so I am really excited to finally be a part of it and just looking forward to getting involved, helping out and learning as much as I can.

Job title and institution

Curator: Mollusca & Vertebrates at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, Cardiff

Twitter Username

@jennifergallich

Tell us about your day job

I have been at National Museum Cardiff for 17 years and for the large part of this time my role has been to work as part of the team curating the mollusc collections. We have one of the largest collections of molluscs in the UK, and it is taxonomically and historically significant. In recent years however, I have also taken on the role of facilitating access to the Vertebrate Collections. As you can imagine, this has been a significant learning curve and I am still in the process of developing in this role. As with many curators, a large part of my job is making collections accessible to everyone, be it through enquiries, loans, collection tours, open days, workshops, talks, visits and everything else. My job also includes curation – adding collections to our databases, sorting labels, etc, but with so many things to cover, I don’t get as much opportunity to do this as I would like. In recent years I have been involved with collections-based research, locating and investigating Type specimens in both our own collections and those in other institutions.

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