The Museums of the North was a really fun module for me. I really enjoyed exploring different museums for the assignment. It felt like I could travel again just briefly. I was debating a couple of museums that I wanted to dive deep into, the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre for example. Ultimately, I…
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For the controversy topic, I found an article from National Geographic about the controversial transfer of a fossil from Brazil to a museum in Germany. The fossil was of the first feathered dinosaur to be found in the Southern Hemisphere, Ubirajara jubatus. The fossil was initially discovered in a rock quarry in the Araripe Basin,…
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For this week’s assignment, I chose two really interesting online exhibits. It was really hard to choose because I found so many really cool ones, so I’ll post those links at the end of this post if anyone is interested in seeing them. I really wanted to write about a natural history or biology related…
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For this week’s assignment, I really enjoyed looking around trying to find interesting examples of media in museums. I watched a ton of videos on the Alaska Film Archive YouTube, but since AFA is a part of the university library, I wanted to find something a bit more museum focused. I did however find this…
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For this week’s assignment, I used two museum data aggregators, GBIF and iDigBio, to find existing museum data for coho salmon, Oncorhynchus kisutch. I chose this species because I know that there will be several occurrences and therefore it will should be relatively straight forward to compare the two aggregators’ collection of data. I also…
Read MoreFor the discussion concerning preventive conservation, I am choosing to consider the different ways you might preserve a fireweed plant collecting in a Southcentral field vs. a northern pike collected in a local lake. Stabilizing and preserving each presents a set of different challenges. One challenge that they both face is that they are usually…
Read MoreFor this assignment, we were to find an object or specimen in an online museum database and list some of the management elements associated with it. In addition, we were to find an object in our home and associate some similar elements to it. I thought it might be fun/interesting to look up a specimen…
Read MoreThere are several types of living museums from botanical gardens, cell cultures, zoos, as well as living history and open-air museums all of which present specific and nuanced benefits and challenges. These challenges come in the way of ethical considerations, logistic difficulties, and potential public safety concerns. Firstly, I think it is important to discuss…
Read MoreMuseums collect various types of objects/specimens for many different reasons. I think some of the nuances of the specific reasons depend on the museum and their overarching goals and purposes, but here I will try to give a brief overview of the purpose of collections. As I am particularly interested in natural history collections, my…
Read MoreFor this week’s discussion, I’ve chosen to dive into the Royal British Columbia Museum (RBCM) in Victoria, B.C. which was established in 1886. Its collections are largely divided into two major types: natural history and human history. Both collection types are rather extensive, the human history collection containing both Indigenous collections (containing more than 14,000…
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