One of the goals of my AMA is to continue to find out more about collections and how these collections can be used in scientific research. Earlier today I found this article by Dr. Tim Ewin. In it he argues that collections knowledge is not something to be taken lightly or seen by museums as a “luxury.”
At this moment in time, there appears to be a lot of pressure from the sector for museums to pour more energy and funding into visitor services and engagement. This is fine, except if you completely let collections knowledge take a back seat then the engagement side will suffer too. Collections are the heart of a museum. Without them you don’t have a museum.
Since I have just finished a traineeship in Biology curation I’ll be continuing to develop my collections knowledge by working on my identification skills, using geographic information from specimens to find out more about them and their range and sharing this knowledge through publications and talks.
The projects I will be working on are:
-Further work on the Hincks and Brindle Dermaptera collection at the Manchester Museum.
-Using collections information to study the mimetic association of Lantern Bugs with Lichens
-Identification of Neotropical Plant species
I’ll be starting the Dermaptera research on Monday.
Asian lantern bugs:
A Stag Fern from the Leo Grindon Cultivated Pteridophyte collection:
Biology Curator 