[Nhcoll-l] FW: making the case for natural history collections and their wider benefit to society and the environment

[Kirsten Nicholson]

David (and all),

I think I must have read this differently from you. Maybe you feel the case
needs to be made differently, but particularly on pages 7-10 I felt that
the take home message was (a) museums have lots of specimens that (b)
researchers use to understand nature's patterns and processes (including
climate change and how nature impacts people
directly/mentally/physically/etc) and (c) those same museums also educate
the public on the findings of researchers which couldn't have been done
without the collections. Thus (d) people should really care about nature
and want to spend more time within it and they can (e) learn more in their
museums and (f) help to pass it on by going with offspring, grandkids, etc.

Maybe it'd be interesting to survey the general public to see what their
take home message is from this presentation.  Did they already do that?

Kirsten

-- 
Kirsten E. Nicholson, Ph.D






*Assoc. Prof. Biology          and       Curator of Natural HistoryDept. of
Biology                             Museum of Cultural and Natural
History217 Brooks Hall                            103 Rowe HallCentral
Michigan Univ.                 Central Michigan University Mt. Pleasant, MI
48859                 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859989-774-3758
             989-774-3829*



On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 7:51 AM, Schindel, David <schindeld at si.edu> wrote:

> Hi, Andy,
>
>
>
> In reading this very attractive document, I was struck by the ABSENCE of
> an argument for collections.  Rather, the document advocates for museums
> and their role in raising public awareness.  No question that they are
> important for public awareness of Nature, extinction, environmental change,
> but I found no connection to collections.  In fact, other than mentioning
> the total number of specimens in the region’s museums and two page that
> describe what the collections contain and what goes on ‘behind the
> exhibits’ there’s no focus on the use of collections or their relevance to
> the public education mission.
>
>
>
> This is not to say that we shouldn’t be advocating for museums as centers
> of education, advocacy and infotainment.  That being said, based on the
> text alone (setting aside what we all know and believe), a general reader
> might ask why good museum space is being used for collections rather than
> public exhibits, since the collections don’t seem important for exhibits
> and education.  I can imagine that this is a question that many smaller
> regional and local museums must answer.  It would be very interesting to
> hear ideas from people in smaller museums on how they make this connection
> to the collections for the public and funders.
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
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