REVIEWING THE SYMBIOSIS OF RESEARCH AND COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT AT THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, LONDON

The long term interest of museum collections hinges on the balance between how accessible the collection is and how often it is accessed. On the one hand museum collections are managed by teams of dedicated, professional collections management staff who maintain standards of care and documentation in order to respond effectively to the diverse needs of users of the collection. They provide the infrastructure and mechanism to facilitate collections-based research by raising awareness of holdings, providing physical access, and being knowledgeable about the suitability of material for particular analytical methods.

However, all that effort is in vain if the collections are never accessed. Whilst exhibitions and outreach programmes make some use of the collections, it is research that provides collections with a solid purpose. It is research that provides an infrastructure and a mechanism to enhance the knowledge and scientific significance of representative samples.

The scientific loan may give some justification for the existence of collections, but without an effective feedback mechanism of user-generated knowledge and data, the value of the collection as a scientific resource, together with the effectiveness of collections management in responding to future research requests, remains unchanged.

The Mineralogy Department is trying to redress this balance by making its collections more relevant and more accessible to research, and promoting feedback from users. Using its collections management database system, increased accessibility is addressed through the use of the web in delivering searchable specimen inventories and collection descriptions. Similarly, the association of raw and processed research-generated data highlights areas of relevance.

With a system that is focussed at specimen-level, the challenge is to synthesise scientific concepts borne from diverse analytical techniques across many specimens and deliver information that is relevant and useful to a variety of users. The goal is to provide a sustainable, multi-faceted system that not only continues to provide a powerful tool for collections management, but also attracts contribution from the research community to assist future research.