Category Archives for Jobs

Conservation Matters in Wales – Christmas Conference 2023

Written by Sebastien Lherondel-Davies, 2nd year BSc student, Swansea University, whilst on placement at National Museum Cardiff and Swansea Museum.

On Wednesday 13th December 2023, conservators and curators from all over Wales gathered in Swansea for the first in-person Conservation Matters Wales Christmas Conference since the pandemic. Conservation Matters Wales is a collaboration between Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, the Federation of Museums and Art Galleries in Wales, and Cardiff University. The event, hosted by the delightful Swansea Museum, was an opportunity for professionals in the museum collections conservation sector to come together and share the wide range of projects they have been working on. The conference provided us with the chance to present our research project on a historic Lepidoptera collection. 

Swansea Museum
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NatSCA Digital Digest – October 2024

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Coordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Welcome to the October 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

Forensic Solutions to Pangolin Poaching

Does your collection include pangolins? Museum pangolins requested in an effort to build a stable isotope database.

The plight of the pangolin and intensification of poaching for traditional medicine is well-publicised. There is an urgent need for new forensic solutions to this crisis that transcend disciplines. The Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) are seeking small scale samples from any and all pangolin species held in UK museums. Of particular interest currently is the Philippine pangolin (Manis culionensis).

The project aims to develop a robust, multi-isotope provenancing map which will make it possible to determine where specific confiscated scales are poached. It will do this using stable isotopes and spatial markers such as trace metals. The team at SUERC are happy to travel for in-house destructive sampling or can provide postage materials if the curators and collection managers would prefer to take samples themselves.

For details, please contact Ruth Lewis-Smith (r.lewis-smith.1@research.gla.ac.uk) at the University of Glasgow.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – September 2024

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

Welcome to the September 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

GCG 51st Winter Seminar and AGM – Call for Abstracts Now Open

The Geological Curators Group have announced the details for their Winter Seminar Reciprocal Relationships: how can partnerships help us and our collections develop?  and AGM taking place at Oxford University Museum of Natural History 11 – 13th November 2024. The dates include an evening icebreaker, presentations, workshops, AGM, conference dinner and a field trip.

The deadline for abstracts is October 14th 2024. Please follow the link for further details: https://www.geocurator.org/events/180-agm51 .

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Creating a New Diorama for The Booth Museum of Natural History – Taxidermy, Silk flowers and Wax Slugs.

Editors note: This is the first of two concurrent blogs about the new diorama at the Booth Museum, you can read the second one here.

Written by Jazmine Miles Long, Taxidermist. https://www.jazminemileslong.com, Twitter: @TaxidermyLondon; Instagram: @Jazmine_miles_long

The Booth Museum of Natural History was founded in 1874 by naturalist and collector, Edward Thomas Booth. Mr Booth collected a huge variety of British birds and was a pioneer of the taxidermy ‘diorama’, displaying birds in their natural habitat. His collection of over 300 detailed cases were donated to the city of Brighton in 1891 with the proviso the dioramas would not be changed. In 1971 the Booth became a Museum of Natural History. Today alongside the dioramas the museum has a huge collection of 525,000 insects, 50,000 minerals and rocks, 30,000 plants and 5,000 microscopic slides.

Life in the Garden. Image credit: Laurence Dean.
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