Category Archives for Advocating Collections

NatSCA Digital Digest – June 2025

Compiled by Olivia Beavers, Assistant Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at World Museum, National Museums Liverpool.

Welcome to the June 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

NatSCA Annual Conference & AGM 2025 Recording 

On May 8th and 9th 2025, NatSCA hosted ‘Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections’, the 2025 NatSCA Conference at the Manchester Museum. This conference was recorded and can now be viewed online on our YouTube channel here.

Society for the History of Natural History Summer Meeting 2025 – online registration open

The SHNH are offering an online attendance option for this year’s summer meeting, ‘A Sense of Nature’ on 19th and 20th June 2025. Registration for in-person attendance has now closed.

The conference will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history. The programme will feature 12 papers across six sessions.

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5 Top Tips on How to Decant your Museum

By Eimear Ashe, Collections Moves Project Manager, National Museum of Ireland

Having recently completed a major decant of Natural History collections in the National Museum of Ireland, I thought it a perfect opportunity to share my learnings with fellow NatSCA colleagues.

National Museum of Ireland – Natural History

Tip 1. Start with the staff!

  • What skills do you need to recruit in or increase capacity in?
  • Recruit new temporary staff. Training should be provided in the following areas: hazards in collections, manual handling, object handling, photography (if part of the workflow), condition assessment, object packing, transfer documentation procedures, integrated pest management (IPM), and the collections management system.
  • If you cannot recruit new staff, you will have to use existing resources. Agree with management that the permanent staff team will not be able to carry on their regular duties during the period of decant. You should also make the public aware of this reduction in capacity and service provision.
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NatSCA Digital Digest – May 2025

Compiled by Ellie Clark, Collections Moves Team Leader at the Natural History Museum, London.

Welcome to the May edition of NatSCA Digital Digest

Digital Digest is 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 Now Open for SHNH International Summer Meeting

We are pleased to announce that registration is now open for the two-day international meeting ‘A Sense of Nature’. The conference will explore the intersections of the senses – including sight (vision), sound (hearing), smell (olfaction), taste (gustation) and touch (tactile perception) – with the history of natural history.

The event will be at Kelvin Hall, Glasgow on 19th June and 20th June 2025. The conference will feature 12 papers across six sessions, as well as collections tours and an optional conference dinner.

Full details are available here. Registration will close at 6pm (BST) on 28th of May 2025.

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A Time Capsule of Extinction: Scotland’s Iconic Wildlife

Written by Caitlin Jamison, Museum Collection Technician, Montrose Museum: ANGUSalive.

Montrose Museum in Angus, northeast Scotland, houses an impressive natural history collection. Everything from taxidermy to fossils to rare minerals are housed in a modest, Greek-revival style museum off the high street. Built in 1842, it is one of the first purpose-built museums in Scotland.

Sadly, due to changing public interest (and the challenging funding situation facing many local authority museums) the collection has been somewhat forgotten since it was catalogued onto neat pink index cards in the late 1970s.

Montrose Museum’s 1970s card catalogue (author’s own photo)
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NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2025

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

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

New Unnatural History Museum Sessions

The Unnatural History Museum brings together museum professionals, creatives and academics across disciplines to platform vital conversations about the museum mediation of the natural world during the sixth mass extinction. The series unfolds over a series of themed Zoom sessions featuring short presentations, followed by a roundtable discussion.

Links to upcoming sessions can be found here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/o/verity-burke-53923741293 and will continue to be updated as more events are added.

The event series now has a website where recordings of prior sessions will be uploaded and you can check out upcoming events: https://unnaturalhistorymuseum.org/

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