Tag Archives for natural science collections

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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Packing the Blaschka Glass Models 

Written by Julian Carter, Principal Conservator Natural Sciences, Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, Cardiff

During the late 19th century, Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1929) produced thousands of beautifully detailed glass models of a wide range of sea creatures, and other animals, for natural history museums and aquaria all over the world. The work has since been hailed as “an artistic marvel in the field of science and a scientific marvel in the field of art”. The work of the Blaschka’s remains remarkably contemporary today, working as they did on the cusp of design, craft, and industry. Crossing the boundaries of science and art, the surviving models today have a value that makes them irreplaceable. 

The idea for making lifelike renditions of sea creatures out of glass arose from the difficulty of preserving and displaying soft-bodied animals such as jellyfish, marine worms, and sea anemones. Preserving such animals in a lifelike way is difficult as techniques such as fluid preservation cause colours to quickly fade and shapes to become distorted. Leopold Blaschka devised a solution to this problem by using his glass working skills to accurately model these animals out of glass and other materials available to him and went on to establish a successful business supplying glass models to museums worldwide during the latter half of the 19th century. 

The model of the sea anemone Actinia mesembryanthum (right) based on a plate (left) from Phillip Henry Gosse’s Actinologia britannica. A history of the British sea-anemones and corals which Leopold Blaschka used for the early sea anemone models that he built.
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NatSCA Digital Digest – March 2025

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

Welcome to the March 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: Registration Now OPEN!

Booking is open for the 2025 Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA) conference. This year’s theme is: Making a Difference: Showing the Positive Impact of Natural History Collections, and it will be hosted by the University of Manchester: Manchester Museum, UK.

Due to the size of the venue there are only a limited number of spaces, so please book promptly to avoid disappointment. Visit the webpage to find out more: https://www.natsca.org/event/2881

This year’s conference meal is at Zouk and we would love to see you there. Please make sure to add the separate ticket to your basket.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you any questions. If you would like to become a member, which would qualify you for the conference discount or bursaries, please see our website NatSCA.org for details. 

30th Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation: Call for abstracts

Please send abstracts of up to 250 words plus an image to sppc@geocurator.org by 10th April. Abstracts will be considered on any topic of earth science excavation, conservation, preparation mount-making and exhibition. Please state if the abstract is for a poster or platform presentation.

The 30th Symposium on Palaeontological Preparation and Conservation will be held in the Netherlands this year on 26 – 27th June.

The theme will be ‘From Excavation to Exhibition’ and they hope to broaden their usual remit to include more aspects of the story of how geological collections end up on display in our museums, as well as their conservation and preparation. Examples of previous years’ abstracts can be found online at https://www.geocurator.org/events/97-sppc

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It’s Getting Better

Written by Dr Amy Geraghty, Assistant Keeper/Curator of aquatic zoology collections with responsibility for fluid collection management.

The National Museum of Ireland (NMI) Natural History Division (NHD) holds about 2 million specimens in its collection. The collection is ordinarily split between three locations: the museum and two off-site storage buildings. However, at the time of writing, nearly all specimens are in one of the two storage buildings. The museum galleries are being emptied to facilitate investigative works on and the refurbishment of building itself.

One of the National Museum of Ireland’s two storage buildings in 2006. It is an old British army barracks that now stores the fluid collection, some of the dry zoology, mineralogical and paleontological collections. (Image courtesy of Nigel Monaghan)

One of the storage buildings is a mid-nineteenth century British army barracks that came to NMI in the mid-1990s and now stores NHD collections. Retrofitting the building for collection storage has involved the installation of plasterboard ceilings, internal doors, and security and fire alarm systems. Toilets, telephones, a tearoom, shelving, and internet facilities were later installed in the 2000s.

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