Home / Institutions & Organisations / Of Interest to Museum Professionals

! American Museum of Natural History and The Paleontology Portal, Collections Management: A Resource for Managing Fossil Collections. This site is divided into four sections (acquiring, storing, tracking, sharing), describing the main activities in managing a fossil collection.

R. Beaman et al. (2004): Determining Space from Place for Natural History Collections: In a Distributed Digital Library Environment. D-Lib Magazine, 10.

! W. Berendsohn, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG): TDWG Subgroup on Biological Collection Data, Software for Biological Collection Management. This page lists software which is used in collection management. See also: Standards, Information Models, and Data Dictionaries for Biological Collections.

R.T. Bex (2019): Scientific Twitter: The flow of paleontological communication across a topic network. PLoS ONE 14: e0219688. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0219688.
"... This study adds to our understanding of the important scientific contribution being made by members of the public as they interact with professional scientists and educators as peers in an open social media platform that supports a diverse and active community ..."

BiologyBrowser (produced by Thomson Scientific). This is a free web site offering resources for the life sciences information community.
This expired link is now available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

C. Bisulca et al. (2012): Variation in the Deterioration of Fossil Resins and Implications for the Conservation of Fossils in Amber. In PDF, American Museum of Natural History.
see also here.

V. Blagoderov et al. (2012): No specimen left behind: industrial scale digitization of natural history collections. In PDF, Zookeys, 2012, (209): 133-146.

H. Blattmann (2014): Massenmediale Logik in der Wissenschaft. PDF file, in German. GFZ Lectures, Potsdam, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum, 31 p. https://doi.org/10.2312/GFZ.LECT.001.

P.J. Boylan (ed., 2004): Running a Museum: A Practical Handbook. In PDF, ICOM International Council of Museums. Paris, France.

Brent H. Breithaupt, University of Wyoming Laramie:
An Introduction,from Tapping Educational Resources.
See especially: Museums: The Underutilized Resource.

J.A. Catalani (2011): Assuring a Paleontological Legacy. In PDF, go to PDF page 24. American Paleontologist, 19.

! Collections Management. From the American Museum of Natural History and PaleoPortal. A Resource for Managing Fossil Collections.

CollectiveAccess. This is a highly configurable cataloguing tool and web-based application for museums, archives and digital collections. Available free of charge!

D.L. Contreras (2018): A workflow and protocol describing the field to digitization process for new project-based fossil leaf collections. Open access, Applications in Plant Sciences, 6: e1025.

Database.
The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation provides an open access platform for the presentation of novel ideas in database research surrounding biological information, and aims to help strengthen the bridge between database developers, curators, and users.

J. Delaney (2008): An Inconvenient Truth? Scientific Photography and Archival Ambivalence. In PDF Archivaria, 65 (The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists).
See also here.

C. Del Rio (2023): Replicability in palaeobotany: Toward a standardisation of citation of extant material. In PDF, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 317.
See likewise here.
"... there is no standard for citing herbarium sheets, personal collections, or field pictures of specimens. Here, I propose a simple citation guideline for all these cases ..."

Deutsche Naturwissenschaftliche Forschungssammlungen (DNFS). In German.
Still available from the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.
See also here.

Deutscher Museumsbund (the German Museums Association). The website of the German interest group for museums and museum staff. Go to: Stellenangebote (in German).

Deutscher Museumsbund e.V.:
Naturwissenschaftliche Museen (in German).
The Group for Natural History Museums represents the specific interests of Natural History Museums and museums with collections on nature in the German Museums Association. Note especially:
! Natural Science Museums in Germany with their own website (in German).

DeWiki.de - Wiki-Artikel Sammlung (in German): Geographie.
Liste deutscher Museen nach Themen, e.g.:
9.1 Botanik.
9.5 Geologie/Paläontologie.

! M.Z. Donahue (2022): Collections after Retirement: Addressing the Uncertain Fate of a Lifetime's Work. Free access, BioScience, 72: 718–724.

! A.M. Doyle (2003): A large scale ‘Microclimate’ enclosure for pyritic specimens. In PDF, starting on PDF page 10. The Geological Curator, 7: 329-335.

Fossil Preparation (American Museum of Natural History and The Paleontology Portal). Go to: Labeling.

Marilyn Fox and Vicki Yarborough Fitzgerald: A Review of Vertebrate Fossil Support (and storage) Systems at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Powerpoint presentation.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ): Deutsche Naturkundemuseen: Am gleichen Knochen ziehen? March 27, 2015, in German. About consolidation trends of German natural science museums.

The Geological Curators Group (GCG):
GCG is a membership organisation affiliated to the Geological Society of London. GCG strives to connect every geological collection with appropriate resources, knowledge and skills to thrive and positively impact science and society.

The Geological Curator.
Geological Curator publishes articles on hypothesis-driven studies which contribute novel results and/or perspectives of relevance to the care and management of geological collections and their use in teaching and engagement.

Gesellschaft für Biologische Systematik (GfBS). GfBS-Newsletters, and AG Kuratoren: Literatur, Dokumente, Links. In German.
The link is to a version archived by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

! R. Guralnick et al. (2024): Humans in the loop: Community science and machine learning synergies for overcoming herbarium digitization bottlenecks. Open access, Appl. Plant Sci., 2024;e11560.
"... Among the slowest steps in the digitization of natural history collections is converting imaged labels into digital text
[...] Our results showcase a >93% success rate for finding and classifying main labels ..."

E.K. Henriksen and M. Frøyland (2000): The contribution of museums to scientific literacy: views from audience and museum professionals. Public Understanding of Science, 9: 393–415.
See likewise here.

L. Herzog (2011): Institutional Analysis of a Natural History Museum: Formation and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In PDF.

E.J. Hilton et al. (2021): The Expanding Role of Natural History Collections. Open access, Ichthyology & Herpetology, 109: 379-391.
! "... Collections, and their vitality, depend on both their continued roles in traditionally supported fields (e.g., taxonomy) as well as emerging arenas {...]
a natural history collection that does not continue to grow by adding new specimens ultimately will limit its utility. ..."

D.M. Jarzen, Florida Museum of Natural History: Paleobotany Collection Policies.

! K.R. Johnson et al. (2023): A global approach for natural history museum collections. In PDF, Science, 379.
See also here.
"... The collections that natural history museums acquired over the past three centuries carry data that cannot be replicated but can be used as baselines for efforts to regenerate ecosystems and revitalize communities. ..."

Kenneth G. Johnson (Department of Palaeontology, The Natural History Museum, London), Harry F. Filkorn, and Mary Stecheson: Paleontology Collections on the World Wide Web: The Missing Link. Palaeontologia Electronica Vol. 8 (2); October 2005.

K.G. Johnson et al. (2011): Climate Change and Biosphere Response: Unlocking the Collections Vault. In PDF, BioScience, 61: 147-153. This expired link is available through the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

The Journal of Natural Science Collections.
The Journal of Natural Science Collections is the peer-reviewed journal published by NatSCA, the Natural Sciences Collections Association, a UK based membership organisation.

T.S. Karim et al. (2016): Digitization workflows for paleontology collections. Palaeontologia Electronica.

S. Kinnebrock and H. Bilandzic (2023): Stories about Villains, Mad Scientists and Failure. In PDF, start on PDF page 303. Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Science. In: K. Zachmann et al. (eds): Evidence Contestation: Dealing with Dissent in Knowledge Societies.

G. Kontogianni et al. (2017): Enhancing close-up image based 3D digitisation with focus stacking. Free access, isprs (The International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing).

J. Kovar-Eder (2014): Deutschlands naturkundliche Sammlungen - Ausgangslage und Relevanz der Sammlungen als Forschungsinfrastruktur (in German). PDF file, go to PDF page 10. Mitteilungen und Berichte aus dem Institut für Museumsforschung, 52.

! J. Lendemer et al. (2020): The Extended Specimen Network: A Strategy to Enhance US Biodiversity Collections, Promote Research and Education. Free access, BioScience, 70: 23–30.
Corrigendum: The Extended Specimen Network: A Strategy to Enhance US Biodiversity Collections, Promote Research and Education. Free access, BioScience, 70: 195.

D. Lewis (2019): The fight for control over virtual fossils. Palaeontologists have been urged to share 3D scans of fossils online, but a Nature analysis finds that few researchers do so.
Nature News Feature.

B.S. Lieberman and J. Kimmig (2018): Museums, paleontology, and a biodiversity science–based approach. In PDF, The Geological Society of America Special Paper, 535. See also here.
"... it is clearly apparent that research involving fossil museum collections data is undergoing a renaissance, and new digital approaches are making it possible to consider longstanding questions of relevance to evolutionary biology ..."

Jere H. Lipps: Into Focus: Museums and Their Exhibits. Palaeontologia Electronica 10(2), 2007.

I. Löbl et al. (2023): The Silent Extinction of Species and Taxonomists—An Appeal to Science Policymakers and Legislators. Free access, Diversity, 15, 1053. https://doi.org/10.3390/d15101053.
"... Our suggestions are
[...] To significantly increase financial support and the number of paid non-term-limited positions in taxonomy in general and particularly in natural history museums
[...] To immediately revive taxonomic research and teaching at universities
[...] To focus digitization efforts on parts of collections
[...] To require natural history museums to focus on collection-based research ..."

! B.J. MacFadden et al. (2016): Amateur paleontological societies and fossil clubs, interactions with professional paleontologists, and social paleontology in the United States. In PDF, Palaeontologia Electronica. See also here.
Note figure 8: Map of amateur paleontological organizations, Facebook likes, and Twitter followers.
"... Our research indicates that more than 60 amateur fossil clubs and societies exist in the USA, of which almost 40 have elected to be part of the FOSSIL network. Overarching goals of this program include enhanced collaborations between amateurs and professionals, knowledge-building about paleontology, access to resources for lifelong learning, and development a viable learning community of practice focused on topics of common and societal interest, such as collections (including digitization), evolution, climate change, and K-12 outreach ,,,"

C.R. Marshall et al. (2018): Quantifying the dark data in museum fossil collections as palaeontology undergoes a second digital revolution. Free access, Biology letters, 14: 20180431.http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.04.
"... the published literature represents only a small proportion of the palaeontological data housed in museum collections
[...] in the early phases of a second digital revolution in palaeontology—the digitization of museum collections—we provide an estimate of the magnitude of palaeontology’s dark data ..."

Giles Miller (website hosted by Natural History Museum, London): Curator of Micropalaeontology´s Blog.

A. Monfils et&xnbsp;al. (2020): Regional collections are an essential component of biodiversity research infrastructure. Free access, BioScience, 70: 1045–1047.

P.C. Murphey et al. (2014), on PDF page 7: A foundation for best practices in mitigation paleontology. In PDF. Proceedings of the 10th Conference on Fossil Resources Rapid City, SD. Dakoterra, 6: 243–285.

! P.C. Murphey et al. (2004): Georeferencing of museum collections: A review of problems and automated tools, and the methodology developed by the Mountain and Plains Spatio-Temporal Database- Informatics Initiative (Mapstedi). In PDF, PhyloInformatics 3: 1-29.

F. Naggs (2022): The tragedy of the Natural History Museum, London. Free access, Megataxa, 007: 085–112.

The National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Department of the Interior (the Museum Management Program (MMP), part of the National Center for Cultural Resources Stewardship):
! NPS Museum Handbook. This is a reference guide on how to manage, preserve, document, access and use museum collections. Go to:
Part I: Museum Collections.
Part II, Museum Records.
Part III, Museum Collections Use.
All files are in PDF format. See especially:
! Appendix U: Curatorial Care of Paleontological and Geological Collections (in PDF).
Appendix K: Photography (in PDF).

The Natural Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA).
NatSCA's mission is to promote and support natural science collections, the institutions that house them and the people that work with them, in order to improve collections care, understanding, accessibility and enjoyment for all. Worth checking out:
! Care and Conservation of Geological Specimens (in PDF).

G. Nelson and S. Ellis (2018): The history and impact of digitization and digital data mobilization on biodiversity research. Free access, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 374: 20170391.
See also here.
"... The recent expansion of digital data has placed biodiversity collections on the cusp of big data science, opening multiple pathways for natural history museums ..."

! A. Newman (1998): Pyrite oxidation and museum collections: a review of theory and conservation treatments. In PDF, Geological Curator 6: 363-371.

! L.R. Novick et al. Depicting the tree of life in museums: guiding principles from psychological research. In PDF, see also here.

D.R. Oldroyd (ed.), 2002: The Earth Inside and Out: Some Major Contributions to Geology in the Twentieth Century. In PDF, Geological Society Special Publication 192.
Table of contents on PDF page 6. See especially:
! PDF page 336, S.J. Knell: Collecting, conservation and conservatism: late twentieth century developments in the culture of British geology.

The Palaeontology Newsletter (issued by the Palaeontological Association).
The Palaeontology Newsletter contains a mixture of palaeontological news, book reviews, reviews of past meetings, details of forthcoming meetings as well as a series of regular discussion features. Copies of the Newsletter from Issue 27 onward are available online.
You may navigate from the Newsletter Archive.

A. Palandacic et al. (2024): An annotated catalogue of selected historical type specimens, including genetic data, housed in the Natural History Museum Vienna. Free access, ZooKeys, 1203: 253–323.

W.G. Parker et al. (2024): New perspectives on NPS paleontological resource stewardship: Scientific, curatorial, and educational outcomes at Petrified Forest National Park. Free access, Parks Stewardship Forum, 40. https://doi.org/10.5070/P540162930.

E. Pijet-Migon and P. Migon (2022): Geoheritage and Cultural Heritage—A Review of Recurrent and Interlinked Themes. Free access, Geosciences, 12, 98. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/geosciences12020098.

! M.E. Popa (2011): Field and laboratory techniques in plant compressions: an integrated approach. In PDF, Acta Palaeontologica Romaniae.
The link is to a version archived by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.
See also here and there.

! K.M. Pryer et al. (2020): Using computer vision on herbarium specimen images to discriminate among closely related horsetails (Equisetum). Open access, Applications in plant sciences, 8.

R. Roberts et al. (2016, article starts on PDF page 7): Root and branch reform for Brymbo fossil. In PDF, Earth Heritage 45.
Provided by the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.
An in situ Lepidodendron trunk and its excavation from the former Brymbo Steelworks (Wales).

! G. Rossetto-Harris et al. (2022): Rapid character scoring and tabulation of large leaf-image libraries using Adobe Bridge. Open access, Appl. Plant Sci., 10: e11500.
Note figure 1: Flowchart illustrating the workflow to annotate large image libraries.
"... Our approach is intuitive and acts as a digital mimic and complement to the experience of sorting and analyzing specimens in-person. Keywords can be easily customized for other data types that require visual sorting using image libraries ..."

M.S. Schäfer (2007): Wissenschaft in den Medien. PDF file, in German. See also here.

Stefanie Schramm, Die Zeit: Die Leichen im Keller. A documentation attempt of nearly forgotten university biology collections (including palaeontology collections) in Germany (in German).

Andreas Sentker und Urs Willmann, Die Zeit: Die Arche vor dem Untergang (in German). State of the art of natural science museums and collections in Germany.

SESAR, the Solid Earth SAmple Registry (an NSF funded project, by geosamples.org): SESAR is building a web-based digital registry for solid earth samples that will provide for the first time a way to uniquely name and identify samples on a global scale by means of the International Geo Sample Number IGSN. Establishing SESAR and the IGSN will have a wide-ranging impact on sample and data management, especially with respect to sample sharing and data integration, addressing a basic requirement for interoperability among information systems for sample-based data.

O.A. Shevchuk et al. (2024): The palaeobotanical heritage of Ukraine and its endangered status following the Russian military invasion. Free access, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology, 331.
"... rich and scientifically important fossils of early multicellular organisms have been documented from the Ediacaran, early land plants from the Silurian–Devonian, coal-forming floras from the Carboniferous, typical postextinction recovery vegetation and coal swamp forests from the Triassic and Jurassic, and well-preserved angiosperms and conifers from the Cretaceous and Cenozoic
[...] The impact of the war on Ukrainian museums and scientific collections has implications for how fossil specimens are stored and what procedures are enacted to preserve collections in other parts of the world in the event of war, civil disturbance, or natural disasters ..."

! C.H. Shute and C.J. Cleal (1987), starting on PDF page 16: Palaeobotany in museums. In PDF, The geological curator. See also PDF page 19:
"What makes a good research paleobotany collection?"

R. Silverman and C.M. Sinopoli (2011): Besieged! Contemporary political, cultural and economic challenges to museums in the academy as seen from Ann Arbor. In PDF.

! S. Simonsen (2020): Fossilien und Recht. In German, Deutscher Kulturrat e.V., Berlin.

V.S. Smith and V. Blagoderov (2012): Bringing collections out of the dark. In PDF, ZooKeys, 209: 1-6.
Note here as well.

The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC)
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is an international society whose mission is to improve the preservation, conservation, and management of natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to society.
Go to:
Collection Storage: Guidelines by Material Type (by L. Elkin and R. Waller).

The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC)
The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections is an international society whose mission is to improve the preservation, conservation, and management of natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to society.
Go to:
Threatened and Orphaned Collections.

Steinkern.de: For preserving the right to collect. See also here (in German).
See especeally: ! For preserving the right to privately collect fossils.

SYNTHESYS.
SYNTHESYS is a European Commission - funded project, creating an integrated European infrastructure for natural history collections.
! Access:
SYNTHESYS funding is available to allow scientists based in European Member and Associated States to undertake short visits to utilize the collections, staff expertise, and analytical facilities at one of the 21 partner institutions for the purposes of their research. A core element is to provide funded researcher visits (Access) to the 390,000,000 specimens housed by SYNTHESYS institutions.

I. Szente et al. (2019): Managing and Surveying the Geological Garden at Tata (Northern Transdanubia, Hungary). Open access, Geoheritage, 11: 1353–1365.

S. Teare and D. Measday (2018): Pyrite Rehousing – Recent Case Studies at Two Australian Museums. Free access, Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e26343.

B.A. Thomas (2016): A Carboniferous Fossil Forest in North Wales: Problems and Potentials Associated with Developing and Conserving a "Soft-Rock" Site. Geoheritage.

K.S. Thomson, Natural History at Oxford University and Oxford University Museum: Natural History Museum Collections in the 21st Century (an ActionBioscience.org original interview, American Institute of Biological Sciences).
Recovered from the Internet Archive´s Wayback Machine.

D. Tirlea et al. (2018) Long-Term Storage of Small Natural History Specimens Using Gelatin Capsules: A Case Study from the Royal Alberta Museum. Open access, Collection Forum, 32: 31–46.

! M.J. Tyler et al. (2023): Calamities causing loss of museum collections: a historical and global perspective on museum disasters. In PDF, Zootaxa, 5230: 153–178.
See also here and there.

J.W.F. Waldron et al. (2016): Building an Outdoor Classroom for Field Geology: The Geoscience Garden. In PDF, Journal of Geoscience Education, 64: 215-230.
See also here.

! Cornelia Weber, Hermann von Helmholtz-Zentrum für Kulturtechnik, Berlin:
The History of Scientific Collections (supported by the the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG).
The project intends to catalogue German universities' collections and to compile extensive data on the holdings and history of these collections, in order to form the basis of a specific investigation into the history of science and a historical analysis of collecting. Go to:
! University museums and collections in Germany.

I. Werneburg and M. Böhme (2018): The Palaeontologial Collection of Tübingen. In PDF. Note also here.
In L.A. Beck, U. Joger (eds.), Paleontological Collections of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Natural History Collection. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77401-5_52. Worth checking out:
Table of contents (57 chapters).

! Whirl-i-Gig (a software development firm working in the varied worlds of museums, biological research and conservation, natural history, material culture, and art history):
CollectiveAccess (formerly known as OpenCollection). This is a full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections. CollectiveAccess is freely available open-source software.

P. Wolniewicz (2009): Easily-accessible digital palaeontological databases - a new perspective for the storage of palaeontological information. Free access, Geologos, 15: 181-188.
"... In order to develop an easily accessible digital palaeontological database, three steps should be followed: (1) digitization of the studied specimens, (2) acquisition of morphometric data, and (3) contribution of the data to open and searchable geoinformatic (palaeontological) databases ..."

J.L. Young et al. (2008): Conservation of an Eocene petrified forest at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument: Investigation of strategies and techniques for stabilizing in situ fossil stumps. PDF file, In: Meyer, H.W., and Smith, D.M., eds., Paleontology of the Upper Eocene Florissant Formation, Colorado. The Geological Society of America, Special Paper 435: 141-157.
See also here.