Tag Archives for training

NatSCA Digital Digest – November 2023

Compiled by Glenn Roadley, NatSCA Committee Member, Curator of Natural Science at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

Welcome to the November 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 AGM and seminar – Building bridges between collectors and museums

The Geological Curators Group will be holding their annual AGM and seminar on November 28th – topics will include:

  • Many important specimens are held in private collections. How can museums gain an understanding of the scope of these collections and the needs of collectors?
  • How can museums gain the trust of collectors and start to find ways to work around the sometimes strict conditions imposed upon them?
  • How do collectors feel that museums can improve the way that they deal with such donations?
  • Lack of ‘proof of legal ownership’ or ‘documentation of permission to collect’ can be major sticking points for museums; however, such provenance was rarely required or given historically (or even more recently). How can we ensure that important historic specimens can be integrated into museum collections? Do we need a more flexible approach to the ‘ownership’ of geological specimens collected from casual sites that are not SSSI’s or other protected statuses?
  • What can we learn from previous experiences?
  • Can museums produce advice to help private collectors to document their collections and highlight or label specimens that might ideally end up in a museum in the future?

For more information and to register, see the GCG website: https://www.geocurator.org/events/162-50th-annual-general-meeting-and-winter-seminar

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NatSCA Digital Digest – July 2023

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Assistant Curator of Entomology for National Museums Scotland.

https://natsca.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/natsca-logo-small-ggg.jpg?w=326&h=124

Welcome to the July 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.

https://natsca.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/natsca-logo-small-ggg.jpg?w=326&h=124

Sector News

HOGG Conference & Field Meeting

There’s still time to register for the upcoming The History of Geology Group (HOGG) conference & Field Meeting. The event will be hosted at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and will take place between Tuesday 15th and Friday 18th August 2023 on ‘Aspects of the history and progress of geology in Ireland’. 

The programme includes the one-day conference and three days of field and archive visits, including a visit to the birthplace of modern seismology, and opportunity to look at material not often open to view.

Registration is €17 (£15) and can be completed through Eventbrite by clicking here. For more information, visit the event page or email duncan.hawley.hogg@gmail.com

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NatSCA Digital Digest – April 2023

Compiled by Milo Phillips, Assistant Curator of Entomology for National Museums Scotland.

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

Registration for the NatSCA 2023 conference closes on April 20th so get booking ASAP. The conference will be held on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. Stoke-on-Trent Museums will be hosting the conference at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The conference will include gallery and collection tours, presentations, poster sessions and the annual AGM. For all the info and to register, check out our webpage.

Register via Eventbrite through the NatSCA website: https://www.natsca.org/natsca2023. Members can access discounted booking rates by entering a promo code which has been distributed. If you are a NatSCA member and have not received a code via email, please contact membership@natsca.org. We look forward to seeing you later this month!

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Early bird registration ends this Friday 15th April. See details and registration here.

Science, Gender & Sociability in a Northern City c. 1775-1820 Conference

This interdisciplinary event brings together scholars in women’s history, the history of science, literature, theatrical performance, music and historical archaeology from across the UK and the US, to contextualise and analyse the diary of Jane Ewbank (1778‒1824). More information on speakers, and links for bookings, can be found here. The conference runs Thursday 8th to 10th June 2023.

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NatSCA Digital Digest – March 2023

Welcome to the March edition of NatSCA Digital Digest.

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

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 Conference 2023

Registration is open for the Annual Conference & AGM of the Natural Sciences Collections Association will be held on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th April 2023. Stoke-on-Trent Museums will be hosting the conference at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery. The conference will include gallery and collection tours, presentations, poster sessions and the annual AGM. The focus this year is:

So how do we actually do all this? Hopeful futures and turning theory into practice for big issues in natural history collections

This is the “How To…” conference for people working with natural history collections. The last few years have seen unprecedented changes in the expectations for what the museum sector can deliver. Global and local social and environmental issues have coincided to reinforce the needs of museums to consider their reinvention and relevance.

Register via Eventbrite through the NatSCA website: https://www.natsca.org/natsca2023. Members can access discounted booking rates by entering a promo code which has been distributed. If you are a NatSCA member and have not received a code via email, please contact membership@natsca.org. We look forward to seeing you in April!

SPNHC Conference

The 38th Annual Meeting of The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is being held in San Francisco, California 28 May – 2 June 2023. Full details here.

Unnatural History Museum session

This session will be held on 22nd March 2023 on the topic of decolonising natural history museums. 

“We are at a crucial historical moment, in which the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List has announced a catastrophic decline in global biodiversity. Yet nature is, necessarily, interpreted in museums, through taxidermy dioramas and skeletal mounts; virtual tours and digital databases; image, text and film. The Unnatural History Museum brings together museum professionals and academics across disciplines to platform vital conversations about the museum mediation of the natural world during the sixth mass extinction.”

Each session is hosted on Zoom to allow for international participation, and takes the format of short presentations focussed around a specific theme, followed by a synthesised Q&A and roundtable discussion. To register and find out more click here.

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4th MOBILISE Training School: “Next Step in the Digitisation Process of Natural History collections: Publishing of Biological, Geological, Palaeontological and Mineralogical data”.

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

In December I was selected, along with 17 others, to attend the 4th MOBILISE Action Training School held in Brussels, 6–7th February. This training school gave an opportunity for students and professionals of Natural History Institutions from Europe and Israel to learn more about the publishing of our collections’ data sets. A crucial aim of the training school was to learn how to map data to the Darwin Core Standard, and as a result, create a Darwin Core Archive file to be uploaded to GBIF.

The Training School consisted of two parts: the first was an introduction to the group. This was conducted online and addressed theoretical issues associated with our datasets. Part 2 was the two-day, face to face trip to Brussels to check the cleaning and validation of our data for it to be ready for publishing on GBIF (for Biological Data) or GeoCASe (for Geological, Palaeontological and/or Mineralogical data).

A group photo of the 21 attendees and group leaders at the 4th MOBILISE Action Training School, Brussels
Figure: 1 A group photo of the attendees and group leaders at the 4th MOBILISE Action Training School, Brussels ©Katerina Voreadou
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