Author Archives for Natural Sciences Collections Association

NatSCA Digital Digest

Greater one horned rhino (© E-L Nicholls)

Greater one horned rhino (© E-L Nicholls)

News

Our very own Paolo Viscardi has moved to the inner belly of London to join the team at the Grant Museum of Zoology as their fourteenth Curator. This shift will at some point inevitably create a faunal interchange of curators amongst the natural sciences collections of the world, so keep your ears to the ground future Deputy Keepers of Natural History…

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Last weekend was the Festival of Geology, always a great weekend full of fossils, rocks and geeky conversations. If anyone who went would like to write a short piece for the NatSCA blog, do get in touch via our normal email address blog@natsca.org. We do love a good write up!

Events

If you live near or are visiting Gloucester anytime this month, the previously mentioned 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards exhibition has been extended until the 29th November. Located at the Nature in Art collection.

Around the Web

As you probably all know, it was the Museums Association Conference and Exhibition last week. I know a few people who attended this year and have heard great things, so if you missed it too and would like to view some highlights, check out the MA’s archive of the event here.

Despite Mark Carnall having left the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL for the heavier-on-dinosaurs but lighter-on-quaggas Oxford University Museum of Natural History, his ever entertaining blog series Underwhelming Fossil Fish of the Month continues. Well, thank goodness for that. If you’ve not had the delight before, this blog is a shining example of how to use the unused-for-good-reason areas of your collections.

NatSCA Digital Digest

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Conference

We will be holding our 2016 annual conference & AGM on 21st and 22nd April, generously hosted by Derby Museums. The venues will be The Silk Mill and Derby Museum & Art Gallery. So, it goes without saying, Save The Date!

Events

On 29th October there is a talk at the Natural History Museum on one of my favourite things: curatorial research!
‘Curatorial research gets a bad name when it serves personal ends, but can it help unlock collections for wider engagement?
This talk is based on a project to understand the life and work of a Victorian ornithologist, Henry Dresser.‘
Held at the Flett Events Theatre, from 2.30–3.30pm. Click here for details.

Speaking of my favourite things, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is open at the Natural History Museum. If, like me, you’ve been avoiding social media so you get to see the images for the first time at the exhibition, you can now do so.

Around the Web

Did you know Manchester Museum has an important collection of almost 17,000 earwigs? A type catalogue of this fantastic resource has been published with a description of the collection and its history and is freely downloadable here.

The Love London Awards hosted by Time Out and voted for by the general public has issued its shortlists. In the Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia and Holborn area ten museums and collections are jostling for position, you can click here to vote. Two of the ten are natural history collections, and could be voted for, by you, if you so desired, just saying…

The Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy is often referred to as the friendly conference. Not just palaeontology, the conference also covers comparative anatomy and thus attracts a natural history audience as well. However the guise under which the conference is going to continue into the future is currently under debate, and those with an interested are being invited to comment.

NatSCA Digital Digest

(Image by Ton Rulkens, in public domain)

(Image by Ton Rulkens, public domain)

 

Your weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

News

The BBC just posted a down to earth (or sea) article called The man who swims with sharks, by Melissa Hogenboom, feature writer for BBC Earth. Combined with beautiful images, it talks about swimming with and photographing sharks and summarises some very interesting facts about these majestic animals.

Exhibitions

If you haven’t seen the Natural History Museums’ exhibition Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea, you should definitely go this weekend. If you have seen the Natural History Museums’ exhibition Coral Reefs: Secret Cities of the Sea, you should definitely go this weekend. It will be your last opportunity to see (or re-see) the exhibition as it closes on the 13th September. There are fantastic specimens, cool interactive games and a video of the only coral spawning ever to have occurred in captivity. I personally recommend it to you.

Opened just last week is the new exhibition In the Footsteps of Elephants. This two and a half week exhibition is only open from the 3rd to the 20th September, so if it’s up your street you need to get a wriggle on. The exhibition is being held at the Nature in Art Museum and Gallery in Gloucestershire, which looks really worth too.

Jobs

If you are looking to move, or move into a, role in natural sciences the Naturejobs Career Expo in London on Friday 18th September should be a great place to meet others in the field, attend workshops and conference talks, schmooze with potential employers, and even get your CV looked at.

If Brachiopods are your thing, then the Natural History Museum in London is currently looking for a curatorial assistant to join them in the Earth Sciences Department. The contract is for a year, and the deadline is the 14th September. Sounds like a shell of a good opportunity (!)

As ever, if you would like to write a blog for NatSCA on anything natural sciences related, give us an online shout blog@natsca.org.

NatSCA Digital Digest

 

NatSCA 2

Your weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Conferences and Workshops

As PalaeoSam mentioned in the last Digital Digest, the Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontolotgy and Comparative Anatomy is on next week. It is my personal palaeo highlight of the year and so am sad that I will miss it this year. (Though not too sad given I am missing it to be in Italy for the Grand Prix.) If you are attending and would like to do a super write up of the weeks’ events, please do let us know.  I look forward to experiencing SVPCA through the eyes of a blogger.

Jaguar

Those of you who are fans of F1 will know why this car is relevant to natural history (image in public domain)

News

Not really on the subject of natural history, but a topic that will touch the heart of any museum professional or visitor. ISIS have taken even more away from the us, the global nation, via the destruction of an Ancient temple in Palmyra. These open air museums are original sites of cultural heritage and are irreplaceable once gone. Not at the top of the list of the most tragic event of the last couple of weeks by any means, but a sad day for museums nevertheless.

News from the Blogosphere

The #MuseumInstaSwap phenomenon has launched as staff from some of the top museums in London (including the NHM and the Horniman) swap museums and take to social media to chat about it. An article in Time Out nicely summarises what is going on but a lot of the museums involved have their own exciting blogs on it worth looking up. Hence this is in the News from the Blogosphere section, see?

Highlights from the Papers

More and more, scientists are relying on Citizen science, as a means of collecting data. The mode of research is especially important in fields such as marine biology where the incorporation of sightings made by anglers, for example, can add significantly increase the size of datasets. An article in Nature called Rise of the Citizen Scientist explores the good the bad and the ugly of this practice as a research tool.

 

As ever, if you would like to write a blog for NatSCA on anything natural sciences related, give us an online shout blog@natsca.org.

NatSCA Digital Digest

natscaYour weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Jobs

Curator of Natural Sciences, Tullie House Currently seeking to become a designated collection, the natural sciences collections are looking for a curator who will get involved in ‘engagement activities, acquisitions, collections care projects, research, exhibitions and collection displays’. Deadline 10th August.

Curator, Grant Museum of Zoology Time is running out to apply for a job that has not been vacant for over ten years. If you think you could be the new Curator of this fantastic natural history collection, you have until 3rd August.

See the job page of the NatSCA website for more exciting opportunities!

News

The University Museums Group (UMG) are joining forces with the University Museums in Scotland (UMiS) to bring you Science and Society, their 2015 conference. It will take place on the 23rd and 24th September at Durham University. Bookings are now open so help yourselves to places.

Around the Web

A great blog came out recently by Jake of Jake’s Bones in which he says, I quote, “I’ve had a lot of T-rex action this week” in Learning about Tyrannosaurus. Now that’s a good week. Full of great images, Jake’s blog asks some interesting questions. He writes with the enthusiasm we all have but often don’t show, which makes the blog a great escape from the day.

Worth a look this week is an image on the National Geographic website (not that there’s ever really a day that it isn’t worth looking at). I don’t want to say much about it as it would risk spoilers, so I’ll let the image doing the impressing for itself. N.B. Make sure you read the caption, it may change what you think you’re looking at…

Something else definitely worth a gander is the tumblr page of Paleocreations. Past the impressive life-size Ichthyostega model at the top are eight images you can scroll through to show how Paleocreations produced the beautiful official artwork of Sophie, the most complete Stegosaurus skeleton ever found, for the Natural History Museum London.