Compiled by Milo Phillips, Digitisation Co-ordinator at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Welcome to the January edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.
Happy New Year everyone, and welcome to the first Digital Digest of 2025.
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
First, we have a few conference deadline reminders for the start of the year:
NatSCA Conference & AGM 2025
The 2025 NatSCA conference Call for Papers is closing soon! The deadline to submit is 5pm GMT Friday 17th January. Get in touch with the committee with any questions (conference@natsca.org). We look forward to reading your submissions!
Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections
The Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 8th and Friday 9th May 2025 at The University of Manchester, Manchester Museum.
Natural history collections are involved in a huge range of work that has enormous positive impacts on people and the planet – this is a conference to share these stories. The #NatSCA2025 conference invites proposals for presentations looking at impact, how our work is making a difference, how we measure it, how we show success, and how we advocate for collections.
We seek ideas from the natural history collections community, educators, collaborators, and beyond. We are interested in practical lessons, unique solutions, new collaborations, and to show what has and hasn’t worked. We are particularly looking for presentations that share the differences museums are making in:
- facing global challenges such as the biodiversity and climate crises, and environmental issues
- improving people’s lives
- changing laws
- social justice, restitution, and decolonisation

