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Preparing Collections for a Big Move

Written by Ellie Clark (Collections Move Team Lead) and Lizzy Devenish (Collections Move Team Lead Digitisation), Natural History Museum, London.

Introduction

The Natural History Museum is in the process of preparing 38 million specimens to be moved, 28 million of which will be rehoused to a new Science and Digitisation Centre at Thames Valley Science Park (TVSP) in Reading – the largest move of natural history specimens globally. Part of NHM Unlocked, this is an ambitious programme to secure the future of our irreplaceable collections, accelerate scientific research and enhance the Museum’s public offer. 

As part of this process, new workflows are being developed to ensure the safety of specimens before, during and after the move. Below, Team Leads Ellie Clark and Lizzy Devenish discuss a couple of ways this is currently being accomplished.

Physical Interventions Survey

It is important to gain a good understanding of the condition and housing needs of specimens before they move to TVSP. To do this, the NHM Unlocked Moves Team are currently undertaking a Physical Interventions Survey across the Palaeontology Collections to better understand these needs. The level of preparation needed varies from specimen to specimen depending on several factors including current storage, specimen condition, size of specimen and collection type. The ultimate aim of the survey is to provide an initial assessment for the time and resources needed for specimen preparation by curatorial and conservation teams to facilitate the safe movement of specimens to the new site.

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Biobanking on a Shoestring

Written by Louise Gibson, ZSL biobank manager at the Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Lurking in the depths of the Zoological Society of London (almost 200 years old), are vast collections of frozen, wet, and dry biological specimens. Amassed over several decades, procurement of these items has come via scientific fieldwork researching wildlife conservation, standard pathological investigation of captive animal mortality, contributions from Border Force and police wildlife crime investigations, and from the occasional public donations, dropped off on our doorstep.

Photo of octopus preserved in formalin – a octopus was left on the doorstep of ZSL, 2021, donor unknown. © Louise Gibson/ ZSL

Although the collections are extensive, knowledge of their contents is limited to those who have collected samples or managed them, many of which have long since left ZSL. Potential was seen to create a biobanking programme with the objective of preserving the collections and the knowledge that comes with them and in turn creating an accessible biological archive open to the scientific community and beyond. As a not-for-profit charity with minimal resources, we are aiming to achieve this on a shoestring budget.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2023

Compiled by Glenn Roadley, NatSCA Committee Member, Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

Welcome to the May 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. If you have any top tips and recommendations for our next Digest please drop an email to blog@natsca.org.

Sector News

NatSCA Conference

The NatSCA annual conference and AGM was held at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. The focus this year was So how do we actually do all this? Hopeful futures and turning theory into practice for big issues in natural history collections.

With 86 delegates present each day plus over 20 online, it was great to welcome everyone back to physical NatSCA conferences. A huge thanks to everyone that attended and to our speakers for the brilliant talks! For those that were unable to attend, we’re hoping to make the presentations available online in the near future.

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Full details here.

SHNH International Summer Meeting

This year’s SHNH International Summer Meeting, ‘The Language of Nature’, will take place at Thinktank, Millennium Point, Birmingham on Tuesday 13 June 2023 (with visits planned for 14 June). This one-day international meeting will explore the language of nature in its broadest sense. Over centuries, different formats and mediums, stylistic approaches and classification systems have been used to describe and represent the natural world. These ‘languages’ influence how we conceive of nature, how we categorise it, how we wonder at it and who we credit with its ‘discovery’. This conference aims to bring new perspectives to the history of natural history writing and other expressions of nature, exploring not only the creativity and originality involved but also the limitations and biases that shape our understanding of the natural world and how it has been perceived throughout history. Full details here.

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‘Dino Takedown’ at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

Written by Bethany Palumbo, ACR, Head of Conservation Unit, The Natural History Museum of Denmark.

At the Natural History Museum of Denmark, work is currently underway to prepare and move thousands of specimens to a new building, located in the Botanical Gardens in Copenhagen. One such specimen is ‘Misty’ our beloved 17-meter-long Diplodocus. Misty has been welcoming visitors to the Zoological Museum since 2014 and is a much-loved part of our exhibitions.

Taking this specimen down was symbolic in many ways. It was a goodbye to the old building but also a celebration of the new building and future of the museum. We wanted to commemorate this milestone and so we decided to make the Diplodocus deinstallation into an outreach event called the ‘Dino Takedown’. This would create a rare opportunity for the public to watch the deinstallation process, ask questions and further understand the types of conservation work we do in a museum.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2023

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Assistant Curator of Entomology for National Museums Scotland.

Welcome to the April 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

Registration for the NatSCA 2023 conference closes on April 20th so get booking ASAP. The conference will be held on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. Stoke-on-Trent Museums will be hosting the conference at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The conference will include gallery and collection tours, presentations, poster sessions and the annual AGM. For all the info and to register, check out our webpage.

Register via Eventbrite through the NatSCA website: https://www.natsca.org/natsca2023. Members can access discounted booking rates by entering a promo code which has been distributed. If you are a NatSCA member and have not received a code via email, please contact membership@natsca.org. We look forward to seeing you later this month!

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Early bird registration ends this Friday 15th April. See details and registration here.

Science, Gender & Sociability in a Northern City c. 1775-1820 Conference

This interdisciplinary event brings together scholars in women’s history, the history of science, literature, theatrical performance, music and historical archaeology from across the UK and the US, to contextualise and analyse the diary of Jane Ewbank (1778‒1824). More information on speakers, and links for bookings, can be found here. The conference runs Thursday 8th to 10th June 2023.

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