Although we do our best to avoid them, we should always be prepared for a disaster so that when they do happen, we have the best possible outcome. Those of us unfortunate enough to have been in these situations, for whatever reason, appreciate that it is an intense period of prioritisation and practical application. Although staged, these exercises still bring a sense of unpredictability, urgency and an appreciation for working together as a team; understanding how to apply this in the real world greatly improves the results for staff and the objects.
Thursday, May 8, 2025 - 09:00 to Friday, May 9, 2025 - 17:00
The Manchester Museum, The University of Manchester
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.
Many of us with historic collections will be familiar with how opaque the information on a label can be, through poor handwriting, placenames that no longer exist, being written in a different language or they can just be incredibly vague. Uncovering this information can add a whole extra level of significance. As many of us are looking more into digitisation and providing local and global access to our collections, the team working at the Natural History Museum on the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) project are here to give us the tools to find the answers.
On April 18th and 19th 2024, NatSCA hosted 'Trials and Triumphs: sharing practice across the museum sector', the 2024 NatSCA Conference at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.
Funding of £155 million for a 10-year programme has been announced by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of the UKRI Infrastructure Fund. The programme will digitise collections; applying AI tools and related technologies to create vast data sets and unlock the impact of collections data in supporting research and collaboration on critical issues including the environmental emergency.
