[Nhcoll-l] Outsourcing prep

[Dirk Neumann]

In his talk on the SPNHC conference in Leiden Rene Dekker, director of 
NCB Naturalis, presented the vision of "integration" of natural history 
collections, that is moving of large parts of collections (inside a 
country or over national borders) to form specialised sub-collections 
focussing on specific organismic groups or regions.

Not long ago, the Amsterdam collection was integrated into Naturalis. 
Soft language for the fact that the Zoological Museum in Amsterdam was 
closed. Same happened with other smaller collections in the Netherlands, 
e.g. geological collections, which - if I am not completely wrong - have 
been evaluated regarding their "scientific value" and have at least 
partly being in danger of being sold aiming to "integrate" only valuable 
items of collections into Naturalis to reduce potential storage capacity 
constraints there.

For me, the idea of "outsourcing" of preparations in Leiden is alarming 
(even though it is not surprising), as this simply means a massive loss 
of technical knowledge & skills necessary to preserve specimens and to 
maintain collections.

Compared to recent decades, we are currently in the lucky situation that 
there is a raised public awareness for "biodiversity research", from 
which natural history collections do or could actively benefit. One can 
only doubt why the management of Naturalis does not take this chance but 
obviously is planning to cut their own preparation expertise. Let's hope 
that this "idea" is not becoming one of these fancy future trends more 
collections want to follow for budgetary or whatever reasons ...

Dirk


Am 13.06.2012 22:32, schrieb Bryant, James:
>
> Of course "Live Science" is wildly popular! It should be expanded, 
> obviously. Becky: what would be the argument at NCB against expanding 
> it? This is what the public wants to know, wants to see, and wants to 
> learn DIRECTLY about: I remember the reports from the staff at the 
> first phase of the Darwin Center in London, and their docent managers 
> said that  - more than the chance to see the collections 
> behind-the-scenes -- the visitors enjoyed talking to the scientists. 
> Why would any of our institutions want to deny our supporters (the 
> public) these kinds of experiences? Why couldn't one of the principle 
> public programs of any natural science institution be the preparation 
> and management of its collections? Maybe become the basis for a formal 
> instructional program (the school within a museum concept)...
>
> James
>
> James M. Bryant
>
> Curator of Natural History
>
> Museum Department, City of Riverside
>
> 3580 Mission Inn Avenue
>
> Riverside, CA 92501
>
> (951) 826-5273
>
> (951) 369-4970 FAX
>
> jbryant at riversideca.gov
>
> *From:*nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu 
> [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] *On Behalf Of *Desjardins, R.B.
> *Sent:* Monday, June 11, 2012 11:44 PM
> *To:* nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> *Subject:* [Nhcoll-l] Outsourcing prep
>
> Thanks everyone for your advice and thoughts on this matter. I  
> appreciate it.   One issue that has not been raised yet is that:  I 
> suspect that anyone who knows how to do this work, and do it well, is 
> already associated with a museum and not willing to take on any more. 
> Or if they are (like the few offers I have gotten) we would have to 
> wait until their schedules are open, rather than be on our time table.
>
> Naturalis does have a "Live Science" area where bird or mammal 
> specimen prep is performed every day for the public and it is wildly 
> popular.  My guess is that they would keep this but all other prep 
> would go.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Becky Desjardins
>
> NCB Naturalis
>
> Leiden, Netherlands
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nhcoll-l mailing list
> Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l


-- 
Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

Postanschrift:

Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Labor
Münchhausenstr. 21
81247 München

Besuchen Sie unsere Sammlung:
http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/

---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

postal address:

Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Lab
Muenchhausenstr. 21
81247 Munich (Germany)

Visit our section at:
http://www.zsm.mwn.de/ich/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20120614/209f8d81/attachment-0001.html