Regional museums with uncertain funding should not hold nationally and internationally significant collections – the QVMAG in its folly entertains the notion that it can. When the institution was founded 130 years ago there wasn't anything like the CSIRO except for the Royal Society of Tasmania.
In a 21st C context there are compelling arguments that say the QVMAG's 'science collections' should go to where they can be used and fulfil their potential. New technologies are transforming the way we use and benefit from natural history collections. Likewise, there is increasingly new ways to understand and interrogate this material – this scientific data.
Importantly the QVMAG's botany collection could be, no should be, transferred to the State Herbarium (TMAG) where there are Botanists and access to Conservators. There has been no Botanist at QVMAG since Mary Cameron in the 1980s yet the collection is recognised as highly significant. Uncared for and unmanaged it is at risk and the institution's recalcitrant governance is essentially oblivious to its peril and, if anything, worried about its maintenance cost while revelling 'value' – albeit that its real value is totally misunderstood.
For example the CSIRO tells us: • Our biodiversity is unique to Tasmania and Australia and the nation is home to half a million - around eight per cent - of the world's species. Seventy per cent of our species are endemic –not found elsewhere on Earth. For example, echidnas are unique to Australia and one of only two egg-laying mammals in the world.
• Biodiversity is a free, planet-scale life support system Biodiversity takes care of essential processes like sequestering carbon, cycling nutrients, purifying water, regulating ocean and atmospheric temperature, turning waste into energy, suppressing pests and diseases, and pollinating crops. Many Australian species also support our industries, including agriculture, fisheries and tourism.
• Collections are critical research infrastructure for the nation Biological collections have a long history in Australia, dating back to the late 1700s. Today they underpin research, policy and everyday practice in: biosecurity, biodiversity, restoration, emerging infectious diseases, biofuels and novel products, evolutionary biology, genetic resource management, breeding, bio-inspiration and bioprospecting.
Collections Research; Collections as a National Resource
In the UK it is acknowledged that the natural history collections in British institutions represent a great national resource; a resource the vast extent of which is only now becoming apparent through the work of the Federation for Natural Sciences Collections Research [FENSCORE] (Pettitt 1986).
Some two-thirds of all natural history collections in Britain are housed outside London (Hancock & Morgan 1980; House of Lords 1991, p.138).
It is only when scattered collections are considered as a unified whole that they "become encyclopaedic" with respect to organisms and geographical coverage (Williams 1987, App.IV).
Already the work of FENSCORE has lead to several "orphan collections" (Wheatcroft 1987) being transferred to museums with natural history curators. There is considerable scope for regional or local agreements, along the line of the Morton agreement between the BMNH and Kew to rationalise their collections (Cannon 1986).
In most museums certain groups are well represented, but other collections are small and fragmentary, and on their own offer little potential for research.
Curatorial agreements, ratified by management, should be sought for each participating museum to receive the fragmentary material of one or more groups in return for a contract to provide material for display, etc., to the other participants as and when required.
Such rationalisation improves the care collections can receive, allows curators to concentrate their special knowledge, and increases the material readily available for research.
To read more in regard to the cultural impact of natural science collections click here
It needs to be said that increasingly over the last decade and more so in the last four to five years the QVMAG's focus has shifted away from 'THE SCIENCE'S to the point where enormous risks and inadequacies are being exposed in respect to the QVMAG's science collections.
"Disposal can be justified where it helps ensure the preservation of collections, makes them more accessible and better used, removes them to a context in which they are better understood or more deeply valued, or releases resources which can be better used elsewhere. (National Museum Directors’ Conference 2003, 9)”
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