Volunteering; The Sixth Week

I have gotten all confused and befuddled. I thought this week was week 6. Turns out my head is a week late. Gah! Anywhooooo. Week six, what happened?

Oh yes! On the Sunday, the MCC had an open day! Myself, Lukas and Lynsey were around to show people around the Natural Science floor, and to speak to visitors about the work we are doing on the collection here. It was a very long day (I had been at work in the morning!) but very enjoyable. I got the chance to walk around the main store on my lunch break, and I managed to see quite a few items that I remember from the old museum. I also held a corn snake! Awesome.

Back in the MCC, Sarah and I continued to work our way through the boxes of 'stuff'. These contain all sorts of wonders, mainly miscellaneous bones! In one box, we found a massive slice of bone, which turned out to be a section though an Elephants skull. Impressive.

We also uncovered a box with Ox bones in.. They looked as though they had once been on a display board, and were in varying stages of being sawn, processed, turned and carved! We found several spoons, some teething rings and a blank for a paper knife. It was really peculiar, and felt a bit weird looking at it all.. Who would want an Ox bone teething ring?!

On the Thursday I was by myself, so I cracked on with the boxes. I managed to finish one box, which meant that we had finished one side of the shelf!! (But then we discovered someone else had dumped more boxes there, booo). During the course of the day, one box contained this:

A fish skull! Not sure what type of fish, I thought maybe a cod? That's my hand on the left for some sort of scale. It was really fragile.. All the bones were wired together, but there were so many! Loads of tiny bones in the middle, and bits inbetween other bits, extra plates tucked in places. Really amazing to look at and hold! It was really delicate - each bone was almost transparent, almost like thick paper. Amazing.

Volunteering Week 5!

The halfway point! It both seems like we've spent longer on this project and haven't been working on it that long. It's quite a strange feeling!


This week, we all took part in a Meet The Volunteer day at Thinktank Science Museum, which was really successful - there were far more people there than I ever expected, and it wasn't just children & parents. Some of the staff came to have a look, the children had their siblings, friends, parents, family, friends with them. One man appeared to be with his carer, and some people even came back for another quick look.

We had three stalls set up - one had a few taxidermy specimens and photos that Lukas had taken at the MCC. Another had a simplified 'tree of life' and some specimens - some fossils, some beetles in plastic cases, a frog in resin, some skulls and an alligators head. The third table was the colouring-in table, which was quite a hit! I had such a great day, talking to people about our work, what we are doing and why. The children who came were all excited at being able to touch the animals and the bones. Not many people realised or believed us when they were told that they were all real, and once were very much alive! Even the Goliath Bird Eating Spider got a lot of love. We had a lot of positive feedback during the day, and I'm glad that I was part of it.

From the Thinktank facebook page

On Thursday, Lukas and I continued with working through the boxes of bones. As we had started working on the Muntjac deer, we decided to finish it. It turned out we had 11 small boxes of bones - we actually ended up with 35 new items! It took us all morning to finish cataloguing it all.

Muntjac deer femurs. ~6 inches long!

Muntjac deer tarsals and carpals (feet and hand bones!) - there were 63, very small, bones all in one box. We gave the box one number because it would take too long/be a bit pointless giving each individual bone a number!

The computer software, MINISIS, showing how many items we had done after just 4 boxes.

This week was also our last week of working with Katie! She is on to pastures new, up in York. It has been brilliant to work with her - despite her knowledge base being social history, she has been pretty good at the natural sciences stuff!

This Sunday August 19th, the Museums Collection Centre (MCC) will be having an Open Day! If you are around, come down! You can walk around the storage facilities and see the object we have in the collections, as well as some of the items that were on display in the old museum but are now in storage. For the first time, the warehouse will be open, so you can walk around the part where I have been/am working! The walkway will take you around most of the warehouse, so you can see the birds, some of the taxidermy animals and some other objects we have up there. Come along! Entry is free, and there will be a falconry display too!

Volunteering; The Third Week

Week Three! We *finally* managed to get the database software (MINISIS) working for half of the day, so we could begin to transfer items from the spreadsheet to the database. We also carried on with checking specimens from the shelves.

 Quite a small Giant Anteater - only 110cm long (can grow to over 200cm long!)

 

 Me, with a strange, unlabelled piece of human bone we found in a box.

We found a second piece of bone, identical to the first. Using a model skelly that is lying on a shelf, we determined that we had found two pieces of a pelvis! We were then able to create a new record on the database for these.

Volunteering Week Two

In the second week of volunteering, we only did one day. We continued to look at the taxidermy specimens on the shelves and tried to trace them in the written accession books. Not all were present, and so we carried on producing basic computer records on Excel, with up to date details such as measurements and a full condition report.

 I like the accession books, they're very interesting to read, but can sometimes be quite difficult to understand!

 Specimen of the week - mongoose avec snake! There are two of these, fairly identical. Gross.

 Sarah King, a post-doc from my uni department is also on the placement this summer. We take it in turns to handle the specimens and wear the body suits.

A constant hazard - hence the body suits!

Volunteering

I started in my role as a Natural Science Volunteer today! I am based at the Museum Collection Centre (MCC) in Birmingham and am working on behalf of the Museums Trust. My work will involve carrying out condition reports, accessioning objects into the collection, taking photographs and generally bringing the catalogues up to date, with a view to setting up a new display at Thinktank in a few years time.

As a NatSciVol, I am mainly working with birds and mammals - taxidermied animals as well as skins, pelts, bones, and today, a piece of whale baleen! Already it has become such a varied place to work.

Today we had a more hands on tutorial and had a go at entering some details into the database, and started to use the paper records in order to determine what is already recorded and what isn't. Lukas and I had to examine skulls and jaw bones for certain pieces of information, enter these into the system, and then take measurements and photos of the specimen. It is not a job that can be rushed! Some pieces are very fragile, and it's not often you get given a skull from a dolphin as a gift..

I am due to work two days a week for the next three months, so I am planning on blogging at the end of each week. Here are some pics from today:

You can also keep up to date with the volunteering here.