Sealed up tight : the endurance of low priority collections : a case study of the Laing Seal Collection at Otago Museum : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Museum Studies at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

This thesis is a case study examining a collection of Victorian era glass seal matrix casts, titled the Laing Seal Collection. Held by Otago Museum (OM), these glass casts make up what this research terms a “low-priority collection”: a collection that does not place highly within the collection policy and as a result receives no resources or research and little staff attention. By examining internal documents from Otago Museum, and interviewing key staff members, the objective of this research was to divine why these low priority collections endure. By examining the history of the Seal Collection this research aims to better understand how collections come to be decontextualised. Through tracing both the provenance of the Seal Collection and its history at Otago Museum this research hoped to discover how and why the collection became unknown. The lenses of material culture and organisational memory are used to better understand how staff memories become the last bastion for historical collection data that is not recorded. This makes that information susceptible to forgetfulness and staff transitions. The research shows that the Laing Seal Collection has no discoverable accession documentation, nor historical records indicating when or why it came to Otago Museum. However, this research did succeed in beginning the process of cataloguing and identifying the Collection and revealed a connection from Laing to Dunedin. It also argues that for the Laing Seal Collection to flourish as a collection, agency must be taken by staff members and the collection be fully integrated into Otago Museum’s Collection Management System. The future of the collection will entirely depend on how many staff resources are dedicated to it

GUIDE TOUR MUSEUM SYSTEM BASED ON RFID (RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION) TECHNOLOGY

In general, museum visitors can not fully appreciate against a collection or artifacts from the museum. Although in every museum collection has a description of the items displayed, such as signs, but the history or details behind the museum collection can not be recounted as a whole. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is an automatic identification system for the object or person using a radio frequency signal that is non-line-of-sight, high inventory speeds, variety of form factors, rewritable tags. The purpose of this research is how to design guide tour museum system using RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification) to help visitors obtain complete information from museum collection. The system was designed using object-oriented approach using UML (Unified Modeling Language) as a modeling language and Java as development language. From the test results found that museum visitors took 0.442 seconds to run a narrative of the collection since the system reads RFID tags that brought visitors. Museum managers also eased in the management of collection data, visitor data, and visitation data of the museum. The system also generates reports as a basis for future museum development

Report on trial of SatScan tray scanner system by SmartDrive Ltd.

Smartdrive Ltd. has developed a prototype imaging system, SatScan, that captures digitised images of large areas while keeping smaller objects in focus at very high resolution. The system was set up in the Sackler Biodiversity Imaging laboratory of Natural History Museum on March 8, 2010 for a one-month trial. A series of projects imaging parts of the entomological, botanical and palaeoentomological collection were conducted to assess the systems utility for museum collection management and biodiversity research. The technical and practical limitations of the system were investigated as part of this process

Faunistic spider collections in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin: The collection of Erich Hesse

The ‘Hesse collection’ of spiders (Araneae) and harvestmen (Opiliones) in the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin is documented. Biographical notes on Erich Hesse – a former arachnid curator at the museum (1921–1940) – are provided. The ‘Hesse collection’ was actually put together by other workers, and can be broadly divided into two parts. One comes from Bielinek (= Bellinchen) on the Polish side of the Oder Valley (West Pommerania); now part of the ‘Unteres Odertal’ National Park. This Bielinek material includes notable records of Heriaeus oblongus Simon, 1918 and Gibbaranea ullrichi (Hahn, 1835). The other part of the collection comes from Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Notable here are Pistius truncatus (Pallas, 1772) and Philodromus buchari Kubcová, 2004; the latter representing the first record of this species for Saxony-Anhalt

A List of the Mayflies (Ephemeroptera) in the Michigan State University Entomology Museum

Excerpt: A fairly extensive collection of Epl~emeroptera representing 35 genera, 1 12 determined species and subspecies is preserved in alcohol in the Entomology Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48823. Although most of the specimens were collected in Michigan, the collection also contains representatives of many of the common species found in New England and neighboring Canada. A small portion of the collection is not Northeast in origin. This list is designed to aid those interested in the fauna of the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, especially if they need specimens for study. I have included the states or provinces in which specimens were collected, as well as the numbers of individuals; more complete collecting data may be obtained from the author or the museum. Many new state records occur in the collection, and some of these records extend the known range significantly

The Tale of the Tokugawa Artifacts: Japanese Funerary Lanterns at the Penn Museum

That previously stood at the back of the quiet inner courtyard of the Penn Museum waited many years for its significance to be rediscovered. It is one of the Tokugawa lanterns that long illuminated the shogunate family’s grand mausoleums during the Edo period (1603–1868 CE) in the Zōjōji temple in Tokyo, Japan. Photographs taken around 1930 show the lanterns flanking the Museum entrance in the Stoner Courtyard. The prominent placement of these objects suggests that, in those days, the Museum acknowledged the significance of the lanterns. One of the lanterns was subsequently moved to Museum storage after suffering damage from an act of vandalism in the 1950s or 1960s. Although it is not clear exactly when the lanterns left Japan and arrived in the United States, Stephen Lang, Lyons Keeper in the Asian Section at the Museum, has determined that the lanterns came into the Museum collection as a loan in 1919 from Mrs. Richard Waln Meirs (Anne Walker Weightman Meirs Rush, 1871–1958). They may have been sent from Japan by Mrs. Meirs’ uncle, Robert Jarvis Cochran Walker in the late 1880s to be displayed at Meirs’ Ravenhill Mansion. [excerpt

An annotated catalogue of the Lepidoptera collection of Guido Lanfranco at the National Museum of Natural History in Malta

An annotated list of the lepidoptera in the Lanfranco collection donated to the National Museum of Natural History of Mdina in Malta is included. Where relevant, comments on particular species or specimens are provided.peer-reviewe

The distribution and habitat of Pocadicnemis pumila and P. juncea (Araneae, Linyphiidae) in Sweden

Two species of the genus Pocadicnemis (Araneae, Linyphiidae), P. pumila (Blackwall) and P. juncea (Locket & Millidge) have been reported from Scandinavia. In order to find out the distribution and differences in the habitat, all specimens of Pocadicnemis from the author's collection, the collection of Sven Almquist, the Swedish Museum of Natural History (including the collection of Tullgren), and the Zoological Museum of Lund have been checked

Documentation of the Native American Ceramic Vessels from Northeastern Texas, Southern Arkansas, and Eastern Oklahoma in the Boyce Smith Museum in Troup, Texas

The Boyce Smith Museum opened in 1968 with the purpose of displaying a large collection of Historic artifacts as well as Native American artifacts collected and/or purchased over the years by Mr. Boyce Smith of Troup, Texas, now deceased. After learning of the museum in 2002, and taking a short visit to the museum at that time, it was apparent that the Boyce Smith Museum contained an important collection of Native American ceramic vessels that warranted documentation. With the permission of Jo Beth Smith, the wife of Boyce Smith, and their son Rial Smith, we returned to the Boyce Smith Museum on December 10-11, 2007, to document 157 ceramic vessels from Caddo sites in eight counties in Northeastern Texas (n=136), Caddo and Mississippian sites in five counties in southern Arkansas (n=20), and from the Spiro site in LeFlore County, in eastern Oklahoma (n=1) (Figure 1 and Table 1). In almost all instances, the only available provenience information for the vessels in the Boyce Smith Museum is the state and county, although in a very few cases, a specific site and/or location within a county is included in Mr. Smith’s collection notes