Beaudoin, Alwynne B.

English

University of New Brunswick: Centre for Digital Scholarship Journals

GEOSCIENCE CANADA Volume 36  Number 1 March 2009 45REVIEWSDry Store Room No. 1: TheSecret Life of the NaturalHistory Museum Richard Fortey Harper Press, London, UK, 2008 ISBN: 978-0-00-720988-0$34.95 (Hardcover)Reviewed by Alwynne B. BeaudoinRoyal Alberta Museum12845-102nd Avenue Edmonton, AB, Canada, T5N 0M6E-mail: Alwynne.Beaudoin@gov.ab.caAs part of  the celebrations for theRoyal Alberta Museum’s fortiethanniversary in 2007, I was involved indeveloping a small exhibition highlight-ing some significant events andachievements of  the previous fourdecades. My research into the Museumand its history made me acutely awarethat much of  this tradition is carried inthe minds and memories of  my fellowworkers and is never written down.Perhaps because of  this experience,Richard Fortey’s eminently readablebook about the history of  the NaturalHistory Museum (NHM), London,strongly appealed to me.Well known for his earlier,well-received, books on palaeontologyand earth sciences, Fortey now turnshis acute intelligence and observanteyes on his own workplace. He pro-vides us with an enjoyable and inform-ative behind-the-scenes tour of  thecuratorial departments. Having spenthis professional career working in theMuseum, Fortey considers himself  wellqualified to write about the place. Hestarts from a profound belief  in theimportance of  museums and a convic-tion that “the people who work out ofsight are what keep a museum alive”.This is not a sanitized official historybut, as he says, stories from the shopfloor, featuring the kind of  institution-al memory and folklore that estab-lished staffers pass along to newbies,and which form part of  the institu-tion’s tradition. Fortey gathers up andtells stories about some eccentric char-acters who have worked or still workfor the NHM. Of  course his owndepartment, palaeontology, gets con-siderable attention but he also intro-duces us to specialists from other disci-plines, including botany, entomology,zoology and mineralogy. Amusinganecdotes about bizarre characters cantoo easily turn into “you had to bethere” accounts, only understandableand funny if  you actually know thepeople. Fortey gracefully sidesteps thispitfall. He situates these unconvention-al personalities within the continuousstream of  knowledge and researchbuilt around the Museum’s collections,from diamonds to Diptera, diatoms tododos. He emphasizes the scholars’research contributions and the scientif-ic value of  their work as well as theirpeculiarities. “Their motivation”, hebelieves, “is an unquenchable instinctto find things out and to make thosediscoveries known to others”. Howev-er, this is not simply an account ofsome eccentrics. If  this were all, thebook would be no more than an amus-ing and irrelevant oddity. Fortey, how-ever, takes this further as he examinesthe significance and purpose of  muse-ums in general. From this perspective,the NHM can be regarded as simply acase study. In fact, his book has a moreserious intention: to advocate formuseums. Amongst the jokes andanecdotes, Fortey presents a well-argued case for the value of  museumsand their collections. Museums, hemaintains, are places “where the visitorcan come to examine evidence, as wellas to be diverted”. The amount of  evi-dence is impressive; Fortey estimatesthe NHM’s collections at 80 millionspecimens. He provides examples ofthe importance of  collections, togetherwith the taxonomists who classifythem and the scientists who studythem. Collections, declares Fortey,“defy time; they transcend what anyone scholar might make of  them; theyare outside our own little personal his-tories”. Fortey shows how specimenscan be re-examined and re-interpretedby successive generations of  experts,yielding new insights each time, as forNHM’s famous specimen ofArchaeopteryx. Fortey concentrates onperhaps the Museum’s main functions,taxonomy, the naming of  names, andsystematics, the often slow and46painstaking elucidation of  the charac-teristics of, and relationships between,organisms. This work is unglamorous;sometimes, as Fortey remarks, it is dis-missed as “counting hairs on legs”. Yetit is fundamental to all biosciences,including palaeontology. New speciesare being discovered all the time andwe only know they are new by consult-ing the archive of  known anddescribed species. As Fortey pointsout, in some groups, such as beetlesand fungi, millions of  species remainto be described and named. Further,Fortey notes the urgency of  this task;documenting the world’s biodiversity iscritical in the light of  increasing extinc-tion rates. Although the whole organ-ism is still the fundamental unit ofstudy, especially for elucidating struc-tures and behaviour, Fortey acknowl-edges the undoubted advances inmolecular studies in recent years, andtheir value in unravelling knotty taxo-nomic conundrums. He illustrates thiswith a compelling but complicatedexample from truffle taxonomy. Cladis-tics is discussed too. Lest one shouldthink of  taxonomy as sterile and irrele-vant, Fortey presents examples of  itspractical implications, includingresearch towards the eradication ofdiseases such as bilharzia, the controlof  harmful insect pests, and develop-ment of  more productive agriculturalcrops. The impacts of  this work can befar-reaching.Museums have not beenimmune to the upheavals and disloca-tions consequent upon social and eco-nomic changes in recent years. Forteydocuments their impact on the NHM,especially the imposition of  a businessmodel of  operation, and the resultingreorganization and staff  cuts. Thismodel often requires justification ofresearch in terms of  immediate bene-fits, which militates against the“research for its own sake” ethos.Fortey is clearly at odds with the newsystem; he presents several examples ofunanticipated benefits resulting fromcuratorial work that was driven solelyby scientific curiosity. Perhaps the mostsurprising is the discovery of  a lostMozart manuscript by a researcherlooking for illustrations of  herring.Fortey also describes the tensionsbetween the front of  house (exhibi-tions and public areas) and back ofhouse areas (collections and researchlabs) and the increasing staff  numbersbeing allocated to marketing and fundraising, rather than curatorial work andresearch. Galleries, exhibitions, andoutreach get limited discussion,although Fortey recognizes changingpublic expectations for museumsthrough the years. He touches onlybriefly on his experience in gallerydevelopment. Evidently, there is anoth-er book to be written about this aspectof  museum work, in which curatorsare often heavily involved. However,here the focus is firmly on the back ofhouse activities. Fortey notes, with per-haps a certain amount of  regret, theincreasing lack of  tolerance for eccen-tricity or, with less regret, for non-pro-ductivity. He also describes every cura-tor’s worst nightmare: rogues in themuseum, or people who gain positionsof  trust and then steal specimens.Thankfully, Fortey concentrates moreon the positive and contributoryaspects of  the passion for collections. I found myself  cheering,chuckling and smiling wryly at manyplaces in this book. It is hugely enter-taining. True, it could be classified as agentle polemic or as self-justification.Special pleading? Well, perhaps. Someof  the situations Fortey describes areparticular to museums. Yet his “tell itlike it is” account of  museum lifeincludes much that will be familiar toanyone who has ever worked in a simi-lar large institution or organization,such as a university or geological sur-vey. His discussion is wide-ranging,persuasive, thought provoking, andlucid. As a curator myself, I certainlyagree with Fortey that museums arespecial places. Now, thanks to Fortey’ssplendid portrayal, the pleasures andimplications of  museum work can bewidely shared. I highly recommend hisbook to my colleagues in geoscience.Gold Deposits of the CISGregory LevitanXlibris (2008)ISBN: 978-1-4363-5354-0ISBN: 978-1-4363-5353-3Price $29.99 (Hardback), $19.99 (Paper-back)Reviewed by Richard J. GoldfarbUnited States Geological SurveyBox 25046, Mail Stop 973Denver Federal CenterDenver, CO 80225, USA  E-mail: goldfarb@usgs.govGold Deposits of  the CIS (i.e. Common-wealth of  Independent States) providesa series of  brief  descriptions of  themajor gold deposits and resources ofthe former Soviet Union (FSU).  Thisregion of  Eurasia, extending from lati-tude 30EE (Ukraine) to 175EE (Kam-chatka), and as far south as latitude39EN (Tajikistan), is defined as con-taining the world’s largest cumulativegold reserve.  Although a few majordeposits such as Muruntau, Kumtor,and Sukhoi Log have recently receivedattention in the Western economicgeology literature, many of  the largegold systems in this region lack anyEnglish-language geological descriptionbeyond a few vague sentences on com-pany websites.  Thus, this bookattempts to fill a need in the basic oregeology literature.The author of  the volume,Gregory Levitan, is among the fewindividuals qualified to fill such a needin the economic geology field.  Heworked on mineral deposits for theSoviet Ministry of  Geology for 35years within the FSU, before moving tothe West and spending the most recentfifteen years as a consultant specializ-ing on gold ores within the same vastregion.  His most recent experience isreflected in the inclusion of  availablemining and mineral economics data ondescribed deposits, material commonlylacking in other published descriptionsof  gold deposits within the FSU.The book begins with twobrief  introductory chapters, one on thehistory of  exploration and mining, andthe second describing the complexclassification system of  gold depositsin the CIS.  The classification system is

Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

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Dry Store Room No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

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