It is a Wednesday afternoon in Naturalis’ Live Science Hall. An older woman walks by, holding her nose, but watching us intently. Shortly after, teenagers on a school trip yell “eeeewww gross!” but then come in closer to check it out.
‘Mainstreaming’ is a policy and planning approach that means that we don’t just create a new programme or strand of work, but that we embed it across all activities. We can embed support for biodiversity and environmental concerns across museum activities.
I am used to seeing trophy specimens in mainstream natural history museum collections – for example, the crouching tiger shot by King George V in 1911 that is on display in the natural history galleries at the Royal Albert Museum in Exeter – but I was surprised to see a taxidermy specimen of a big Brown Bear at the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, holding a medal that it had been awarded at the Berlin International Hunting Exhibition in 1937.
After visiting the recent natural history museum community conference in July: SPNCH 2014, Cardiff, Mark Carnall reflects on what the sector internationally is thinking and doing – in particular what’s happening digitally and what people’s thoughts are on a UK natural science database.
The Natural History Museum (NHM), Linnean Society London, and NatSCA held a workshop to agree a project proposal for a collections-level information system for natural science collections in the UK.
