Category Archives for Social Media

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

Chameleon

Events

  • The iDigBio 4-part webinar series, The Value of Digitizing Vertebrate Collections, starts on Tuesday 8th September. The first session is on mammal collections (delivered by Cody Thompson, University of Michigan), and will be held at 3 – 4pm EDT (that’s 8 – 9pm in the UK!). You can access it here: https://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/vertdigitization. The following three sessions will be at the same time each Tuesday (at the same link):

September 15: The Value of Digitizing Fish Collections, Andy Bentley, University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and President of SPNCH
September 22: The Value of Digitizing Herpetology Collections, Chris Phillips, Illinois Natural History Survey, University of Illinois
September 29: The Value of Digitizing Bird Collections, Carla Cicero, UC Berkeley and Lead PI for Vertnet.

Around the Web

What to do when someone gives you a giant squid.

A technological revolution in museums? 3D printing and virtual reality.

A visit to Microbia, the world’s first microbe museum!

CT scan reveals fossils within fossils.

19th century Ecuadorian snail specimen is a new species.

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.

Using Social Media as part of a Curatorial Traineeship

This post is another in our series of presentation write-ups from the 2015 NatSCA Conference, Museums Unleashed!

 

It felt like I was up there for hours when it was happening, but then it was over with a massive sense of relief. That’s how I’d summarise my first presentation in front of fellow NatSCA conference attendees.

We (myself and another two Natural Science Curatorial Trainees, Glenn and Lukas) had been asked to prepare a talk fitting with the conference theme of ‘Museums Unleashed’.  The conference was to focus on sharing collections using digital platforms, television and other forms of media, so we decided to present on our own use of Social Media throughout the 12 months of our Traineeships.

The presentation we came up with explored our use mainly of Twitter and WordPress throughout our year (other social media platforms are available), which we used to document our experiences and engage with the wider museum community. We were able to speak about things such as how fun Social Media can be when it’s used well, and how good of a platform it can be to engage with members of the public in order to (hopefully) dispel some of the myth about museums being so exclusive.

Presenting in full flow! (Image from Clare Brown @CuratorClare)

Presenting in full flow! (Image from Clare Brown @CuratorClare)

We also got to speak about how Social Media (from our perspective as trainees) could be used for our host museums. For example, showing the support of an institution or organisation for a trainee by letting them be there, working with collections and allowing them to further advocate said collections.

Our presentation allowed us to touch on some things that can make Social Media a challenge too, such as building a following. This can be difficult, especially when trying to expand outside the ‘Museum bubble’ – it can be hard to find those who may be interested in a particular discipline or hashtag.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at the conference who gave us great positive feedback about our talk, as especially for myself being so nervous, it was great to hear I wasn’t a complete mumbling wreck! And thanks again to NatSCA and its members for its support of myself, and my fellow trainees whom it has helped support over the years of the HLF Skills for the Future
programme.

 

Adam Peel, Curatorial Trainee Natural Science, 2014 – 2015

NatSCA Digital Digest

A mounted skeleton of a fruitbat leers at the cameraYour weekly round-up of news and events happening in the world of natural sciences

Jobs

Curator of Natural Sciences, Tullie House Museum. Fixed term for 12 months (with potential for extentsion). Tullie House is also looking for a Collections Access Manager at the moment.

Operations and Project Officer, Lyme Regis Museum. A great opportunity to work on the iconic Jurassic Coast.

UK Flora Collections Assistant, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. An interesting role combining field work, lab work, and collections!

As always, see out jobs page for more opportunities.

Events

SVPCA (The Symposium of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy) is coming up on 29th August – 4th September. This year it is to be held at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.

#AskACurator Day is back on Twitter on 16th September. It’s a great way for people to talk to museum staff who are normally ‘behind the scenes’, and for us to get exposure for the amazing work we all do with our collections.

Around the Web

Dinosaurs on tour: Dippy the Diplodocus will be leaving his home at the NHM for a holiday, and the museum is looking for host venues. Must have large gallery.

The genome of the kiwi (Apteryx mantelli) has been sequenced, revealing insights into its strange physiology.

Giant animals that are almost impossible to find! Did you know that the largest stick insect recorded is in the collection of the Natural History Museum (NHM), and is over half a metre long?

Brymbo Fossil Forest in Wrexham has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), protecting the future of its precious 300 million year-old fossils. Sadly, many fossils were lost in arson attacks on the site last year.