Author: Tony Thompson

There 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…

Museums 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…

For 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…

Sorry for the late post! I was having technical issues yesterday. What does my ideal museum job look like? I am very interested in various different departments and subunits of museums. I think the most interesting to me are the collections. Being interested in biology and the sciences, I really enjoy being around physical specimens.…

Natural history museums are museums that collect and exhibit objects of biological, geological, and ecological relevance. I think the major difference between natural history museums and other types is its importance to research. That is not to say that other types are not important to research, but that natural history museums play a very large…