Volunteering Week Ten; The Final Week

What happened in week 10? It was our last week, so we were happy and sad and up for a laugh and wanting to get it done and intending to get loads done and to conclude at a satisfactory point. And then we found a walrus skull.

We also found a dugong skull - WEIRD. 

We also explored another green box, just to finish up the section, and we found more skulls, mostly of terriers. We found a seal skull, I think it was a cape sea lion, big sharp pointy teeth! The box also contained the ear bones from several whales; two of which were marked as humpback whales! 

Tucked away in a corner of a box was the skull of a fox terrier, with its teeth attached to a piece of card. A little bit weird.

As it was our last week, Lynsey came up to see us, and we were presented with certificates for the work that we have done! So we hosted a prompt and cheesy award ceremony photoshoot ;-)

It was a really, really good ten weeks and I honestly learnt something new every time I was there! It was also great to get some experience in this sector, as museum work is one career path I am interested in taking when I graduate. I'm also a bit morbid and am fascinated by bones, especially skulls, so it was good to indulge that side of me too! A big thankyou to Lynsey at Thinktank, and all the MCC staff for helping us get the work done, despite technology issues! Hopefully I will be back next year to finish up the Natural Science section.

Volunteering Week 9! Bones!

In week nine, we continued to work on the large items on the shelves. There were lots of bones that needed identifying as much as they could be, and then adding to the MINISIS software.

We had half a skeleton of a large cat; a whole taxidermy peacock and a monkey of some sort complete with gunk on the joints!

Handling taxidermy peacocks is a lot harder than you may think!

Volunteering Week Eight! A belated post

I’m not very good at blogging a series of posts on the same subject. I’ve been meaning to catch up with these posts for a while, but have just never had the desire to do it. No more! I *will* get the remaining posts written, and then you’ll all hopefully be sick of pictures of skulls!

So, in week 8, from what I can remember, we carried on working through the box of monkeys, which actually contained six primates and a koala.

We also carried on with some of the large taxidermy animals, which included a hyena, a deer, a fox and a cat! The hyena was quite big – I didn’t think they were that big – but the face looked it was smiling at us. Very unnerving.

I also had a mooch around the far side of the warehouse, and found some more weird and wonderful taxidermy. A pet dog? A sloth on a branch? A seal? Welcome to museum storage!

There were also some objects that were not part of the natural science collection, so I took photos of these as well.

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 Four

More of the same - we carried on looking through boxes to see what had numbers and what needed numbers. Quite a few specimens had numbers that weren't meant to exist (they didn't correspond to anything) so we had to re-number quite a lot of stuff. The MINISIS software worked brilliantly both days, and I think we've ironed out any teething issues - we all know how and what to enter and where to enter it, and I think the records we've been making are pretty full!

We found this skull in the bottom of one of the boxes. We have no idea what it is?! It looks almost like it wants to be a Triceratops, with the ridge at the top. It obviously had large horns. That's my hand for some sort of scale - anybody have any ideas?

Wartime posters in one of the downstairs rooms.

A brilliant entry in the accessions book!

The warehouse stores all sorts of objects, not just Natural Science. This shelf is behind the computer.

Muntjac-In-A-Box! (Eleven boxes containing Muntjac deer bones. Lukas and I wanted to assemble them with blu-tac. This idea didn't go down well).

All in all, I'm loving being a NatSciVol! The work is varied, interesting, weird, funny, tedious, amazing and rewarding all at the same time. We have tracked down things that were missing; we've added a decent amount of specimens to the catalogue; we've photographed a lot of the birds (mostly in glass cases); and we think we've found the source of the Llama head which is sitting on a shelf. I could quite easily do this more often, two days a week just isn't enough! We're nearly halfway through the project - next week (Wednesday), we will be at Thinktank Museum to do a Meet The Volunteer day. On August 19th the Museums Collection Centre will be open to the public so you can come down and see some of the objects we have been working with! 

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.