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.

Continue reading →

A Hundred Feet Through the Door – A Chance Encounter with some Centipedes set me on a Curatorial Path…

Written by Dan Gordon, Keeper of Biology, The Great North Museum: Hancock.

So, how did I get started in museums? Like perhaps many people, it began with a stroke of luck.

I’d decided to study Biology at university—I suppose I’d vaguely pictured myself at some point in the future, white-coated in the lab, pouring over spectrophotometer readings or agar plates. But by the end of the first year, I found myself staring out of the window during practicals. Nineteen-year-old me was slowly becoming disillusioned: Botany was biochemistry; Zoology was elegant mathematics; even Ecology was really an intricate forest of statistics, not trees. There was beauty in the numbers, but it was all a long way from my childhood passion for birdwatching, rock pooling and reading travel books. One day, peering at smudges on a petri dish and trying to work out if I’d just induced gene expression, I realised I might not be cut out for that imagined future. I was fascinated by the soul of the subject, but the finer points of its language were losing their magic.

Continue reading →

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.
Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

A Stable Future – Research into the Stability of Materials used in Taxidermy Manufacture.

Written by Jazmine Miles Long – Taxidermist & Bethany Palumbo – Head of Conservation, Natural History Museum Denmark.

Taxidermy collections are crucial for our understanding of biodiversity, evolution, population genetics and climate change. They form a large part of natural science collections and their long-term preservation is essential. Historically, taxidermy was created using natural, durable materials such as wood, plant fibres, wax, clay and glass with examples dating back to the 16th century. However, over the past 50 years, taxidermists have increasingly adopted synthetic and plastic-based materials due to their ease of application, lower cost, and effectiveness in creating realistic specimens. One such example is polyurethane, a very widely used material to build the form that goes under the taxidermy skin. Although polyurethane has been extensively tested (albeit not specifically for taxidermy), it has already been shown to be unstable and unsuitable for long-term use. Awareness of stable, durable materials is not widespread within the taxidermy community. As a result, many modern museum taxidermy pieces are made with untested and potentially unstable materials.

Continue reading →