The afterlife of a nuclear dosimeter: Locality, risk and the Cold War in the museum

Blue, yellow, fluorescent lighting, computer terminals in every corner, exhibits resembling a Fisher Price toy or a wooden building kit—museums and science centres nowadays appear to be a cross between a computer technology exhibition and a child's dream of a playground. They reflect many of the efforts that are currently being devoted to making science and technology interesting for the younger generation, the one that will give rise to the scientists and engineers of the future. But also as science and technology increasingly impact on society, the 'shelf‐life' of formal education is becoming shorter and informal lifelong learning is becoming more important. The result is a flurry of activities instigated by politicians, scientists and educators to bring science to the people and increase their understanding. National Science Week, science buses touring the countryside and visitor days in research institutes are just a few examples of how they are reaching out to the public and, importantly, to the next generation of students. Museums and science centres form a prominent base for the communication of science, but despite their comparatively long history, the art of exhibiting science is relatively in its infancy. Dating back to the late 19th century, museums were then the theme parks of the day and important collections have been amassed in such mighty institutions as London's Science Museum, Munich's Deutsches Museum, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Particularly during the last decade, the USA has pioneered the creation of more informal interactive science centres, most famously with the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1969. Today, virtually every major American city boasts its own version, some 300 in all. Europe has also witnessed a similar trend, to the extent that the distinction between museums and science centres …

R. Michael Spearman and John Higgitt, eds., The Age of Migrating Ideas: Early Medieval Art in Northern Britain and Ireland. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Insular Art held in the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, 3–6 January 1991. Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland; Stroud, Glos., Eng.: Alan Sutton, 1993. Paper. Pp. x, 267; black-and-white frontispiece, many black-and-white

A catalogue is here provided of the pieces of Mexican amber with inclusions in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London, and National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, both in the United Kingdom. There are 32 pieces in the Natural History Museum and 101 pieces in National Museums Scotland which contain a combined total of 557 arthropod and 13 plant inclusions. Four orders and 11 families of arthropods are additional to a taxonomic list of Mexican amber arthropods published in 2010

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, Objects of the Mind: engaging publics in the material cultures of media and mental health (AH/W002140/1), which was co-investigated by academics at the University of East Anglia and the University of Manchester and curators from across the Science Museum Group (SMG). Through this co-investigation we sought to tap into public interest in the SMG object collections and the accessibility of popular films (supplied by partners StudioCanal) to engage new audiences for our research on the interactions of psychiatry and cinema. From the museum perspective, we sought to use this research to ask new questions and tell new stories about the SMG objects, and to foster cross-collection dialogue between medicine (Science Museum) and media (National Science and Media Museum) collections. We discuss a range of events, activities and outputs we delivered towards these aims, but focus particularly on three new films we produced that (re)combined museum objects, feature film clips and expert interviews to tell new, enhanced or entangled stories about and across the collections. We will use these three short films to demonstrate three dialogues the project fostered: between museum collections; between histories; and between academic disciplines.

En el ensayo se analizan procesos de transformación de la alimentación en patrimonio cultural. Estas dinámicas, que suponen la selección y activación de determinados elementos de las tradiciones culinarias, son promovidas por distintos agentes sociales que pugnan por la versión autorizada. El estudio de distintos referentes empíricos permite identificar tres modelos ideales a través de los cuales la alimentación es elevada a la categoría de patrimonio cultural: exo-patrimonialización, endo-patrimonialización y patrimonialización negociada.

The National Science and Technology Museum of Taiwan Jui-Chen Yu (bio) The idea of building a science museum in southern Taiwan first surfaced in 1979. Since Kaohsiung was a modern industrialized city, the central government of the Republic of China, with the support of the city government, chose it as the site for a national museum that would introduce scientific concepts and technological development. Construction of an exhibition building began in 1989, and the National Science and Technology Museum was formally opened on 9 November 1997. The largest science museum in Taiwan (occupying a base area of 19 hectares and a floor area of 114,355 square meters) the museum is under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, which funds its operating costs. Hence, although the museum is located in southern Taiwan, it serves the whole island. Two factors account for the increasing popularity of contemporary science museums: first, the rapid development of science and technology, and the increasing complexity of technological innovations; second, an increase in the number of people seeking learning opportunities outside of school. 1 Technological complexity already makes many people think science is incomprehensible and technology frightening, but their impact on our lives and society is too obvious to ignore. The response of formal education to societal needs is, as always, unfortunately slow. On the other hand, science museums, as informal learning places with rich collections, interactive exhibits, and interesting activities, begin to play an important role in promoting technological literacy for all citizens. The twentieth century has been characterized by changes of unparalleled rate and scale, in which the rapid development of technology has been a major factor. The impacts of technology on human beings can be found in every aspect of life: agricultural productivity has increased through the [End Page 107] use of machines and fertilizers, modern genetics has helped to increase the natural variability within plant species, plastics can be designed to have a wide variety of properties for different uses, from automobile and space vehicle parts to food packaging and fabrics to artificial hip joints. 2 As D. M. Baird points out, technology has brought a great many benefits for people, but it also bears with it great responsibility and a measure of risk. 3 Nuclear energy offers tremendous potential for power generation and beneficial applications, but how can we be sure that it will be used safely and its waste products disposed of properly? How do we guarantee the safety of those who handle nuclear materials? It is clear that scientific and technological literacy must increase for the whole population. Technology is truly global in its impact, and educators are gaining wider recognition in countries around the world as people realize the value of improving the technological literacy of the general public. Although people are becoming aware of the need for technological literacy, schools have not always been effective in applying formal education to offer good instruction in science and technology. Rigid teaching methods have often stifled the natural curiosity of young students, and schools are too frequently lacking in the facilities needed to teach science and technology, limiting opportunities to learn from personal experience and observation. This is where informal education comes in, to support and supplement formal education where necessary. A technology museum is basically a treasure house for communicating information about technology in many different ways. Silverstone describes it as a unique medium. 4 Like other media, it offers entertainment while communicating information and building interest among the public. On the other hand, it is different from other media in that it offers a setting—the building in which it is located—as well as stimulating graphics and text for the viewer. The museum building provides space for the display of instruments and materials used in science and technology, and it can even give people a chance to literally get their hands on technology and experience it, to both read about it and get to know it firsthand. If collections are the heart of museums, education is the spirit. Museums offer a totally different learning environment from schools, one that can stimulate the imagination and broaden the powers of observation. 5 A good [End Page 108...

This study examines the important charms and amulets collection in the National Museums of Scotland, particularly for their ‘charms against witchcraft’, to offer examples of artefacts said to have been used in witchcraft and exemplifying references in the written evidence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by surviving material culture. It is suggested that these familiar groupings also give off messages which may in selected instances reveal more about the history of latterday collecting than of witchcraft, and more about the predilections and preoccupations of folklorists. This is not to deny that some of these artefacts have much to tell us at least by inference about the material culture and traditions of witchcraft in the early modern period, or to ignore the texture and colour that they lend to the written evidence. The museum record is here characterised as ‘magic and mischief in museum collections’ to offer a challenge to accepted wisdom and to suggest that, without careful exercise of analysis and interpretation, the value of these objects as historical evidence in such a complex subject may often be low.

TECHNOLOGY MUSEUMS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM ALEXANDER HAYWARD A wide range of museums and related organizations preserve and present Britain’s technological heritage. It is not possible here to men­ tion all of them, let alone to give each the attention it might merit. Instead, I will examine in some detail those undertakings that illus­ trate various approaches to museum provision and operation. The largest museum in Britain concerned with technological mate­ rial is the National Museum of Science and Industry, consisting of the Science Museum in London and its outstations: the National Mu­ seum of Photography, Film, and Television in Bradford and the Na­ tional Railway Museum in York. The Science Museum was founded in 1857, and because of its long history has been able to amass large collections relating to power technology, transport, communications, and manufacturing, all of which combine to serve as a prime taxo­ nomic record of industrialization in the United Kingdom.1 Recent collecting has concentrated on significant post-1960 material. To­ gether with gallery updates and redisplays, new permanent galleries, and “Technology Futures” exhibits, this is improving the representa­ tion of modern science, technology, and medicine throughout the museum. The National Museum of Science and Industry is classified as a “national” museum. Such museums by definition receive the bulk of their funding from central government and hold collections of na­ tional and international significance. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, unlike England, have museums of their “national” cultures: the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, the National Mu­ seum of Wales in Cardiff, and the Ulster Museum in Belfast. They do not specialize in the areas of science, technology, and medicine on the same scale as the National Museum of Science and Industry but do consider them as part of the whole range of subjects that constitute Mr. Hayward is external affairs coordinator for the Science Museum. He is cur­ rently researching the British airplane engine industry during World War I. 'For an overview of the history of the National Museum of Science and Industry and its key exhibits, see N. Cossons, ed., Making of the Modem World (London, 1992).© 1996 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/96/3701-0006$01.00 138 Technology Museums in the United Kingdom 139 natural and human history. In addition, the national museums in Scotland and Wales incorporate smaller museums that focus on vari­ ous aspects of technology, such as the Museum of Flight at North Berwick, and the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum in Cardiff. In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Holywood is concerned with the transport heritage of the province. England does have other “national” museums whose collections relate to the history of technology. These include the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Imperial War Museum, and the National Mari­ time Museum in London, and the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. Their holdings reflect some of the variety of applications of technology and present it within interestingly different contexts such as art and design, and military and economic history. There are many other museums organized on a regional or local basis that complement the national collections of science and technol­ ogy. The funding of all these museums is quite involved. Those funded by local government tend to be long established, generalist in approach (although sometimes with branch museums of technol­ ogy), and based in towns or cities. The majority of recently established museums focus on a particular site or subject area and are often constituted as independent educational charitable trusts. These aim to generate as much of their own income as possible. The best have adopted innovative and entrepreneurial methods of operation that have helped enliven the museum scene generally. Nonetheless, these independent museums are frequently supported to a considerable extent by local and central government grant aid. Major technology collections are located in historic manufacturing centers such as Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Bristol, Glas­ gow, and Leeds. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester had its origins in the late 1960s, when objects demonstrating the industrial history of northwest England were assembled in a museum on the campus of the University of Manchester Institute of Science...

The hollow silver male miniature figurine from National Museums Scotland is one of the tallest specimens made in precious metals attributed to the Incas. In spite of showing the expected characteristics of this type of Inca production for ritual offerings —regular proportions and standing pose, representation of its gender, bulging cheek associated to coca leaves chewing and elongated earlobes— this figurine differs from the regular figurines by the form of the top of its head. In addition, the skilled decoration includes details such as well portrayed feet. The technologies and the alloy employed in its manufacture were examined using a stereo microscope and by non-destructive X-ray fluorescence analysis. Comparison between this figurine with the hollow silver male figurines of equivalent stature and typology kept at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection and Museum of America shows that they are all made with the same technology and by employing silver alloys with copper contents below 0.5%. These alloys are richer in silver than the majority of the alloys employed to fabricate normal Inca hollow figurines of known provenance or from other museum collections.

Hugh Miller (1802-1856), Scottish geologist, newspaper editor and writer, is a perhaps unique example of a geologist with a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace cottage, in Cromarty, northern Scotland. He finally housed his geological collection, principally of Scottish fossils, in a purpose-built museum at his house in Portobello, now in Edinburgh. After his death, the collection was purchased in 1859 by Government grant and public appeal, in part as a memorial to Miller, for the Natural History Museum (successively Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, Royal Scottish Museum, and part of National Museums Scotland). The collection's documentation, curation and display over the years are outlined, using numerical patterns in the documentation as part of the evidence for its history. A substantial permanent display of the Miller Collection, partly by the retired Benjamin Peach (1842-1926), was installed from c. 1912 to 1939, and briefly postwar. A number of temporary displays, and one small permanent display, were thereafter created, especially for the 1952 and 2002 anniversaries. Miller's birthplace cottage was preserved by the family and a museum established there in 1885 by Miller's son Hugh Miller the younger (1850-1896) of the Geological Survey, with the assistance of his brother Lieutenant-Colonel William Miller (1842-1893) of the Indian Army, and the Quaker horticulturalist Sir Thomas Hanbury (c. 1832-1907), using a selection of specimens retained by the family in 1859. It may not have been fully opened to the public till 1888. It was refurbished for the 1902 centenary. A proposal to open a Hugh Miller Institute in Cromarty, combining a library and museum, to mark the centenary, was only partly successful, and the library element only was built. The cottage museum was transferred to the Cromarty Burgh Council in 1926 and the National Trust for Scotland in 1938. It was refurbished for the 1952 and just after the 2002 anniversaries, with transfer of some specimens and MSS to the Royal Scottish Museum and National Library of Scotland. The Cottage now operates as the Hugh Miller Birthplace Cottage and Museum together with Miller House, another family home, next door, with further specimens loaned by National Museums Scotland. The hitherto poorly understood fate of Miller's papers is outlined. They are important for research and as display objects. Most seem to have been lost, especially through the early death of his daughter Harriet Davidson (1839-1883) in Australia. Miller's collection illustrates some of the problems and opportunities of displaying named geological collections in museums, and the use of manuscripts and personalia with them. The exhibition strategies can be shown to respond to changing perceptions of Miller, famous in his time but much less well known latterly. There is, in retrospect, a clear long-term pattern of collaboration between museums and libraries in Edinburgh, Cromarty and elsewhere, strongly coupled to the fifty-year cycle of the anniversaries of Miller's birth.

The manufacture of domestic pottery in Scotland was an important industry producing vast quantities of wares for both the home and export markets. The industry reached its height in the nineteenth century, the era that saw the inception of international exhibitions and the establishment of industrial museums. Over recent decades Scottish pottery has been collected by both museums and individual collectors and research in the field of material culture has uncovered the history of this significant industry. This paper will examine nineteenth-century attitudes to contemporary collecting of Scottish pottery, focusing on two of the institutions which eventually came to be absorbed into National Museums Scotland – the Industrial Museum of Scotland and its successor the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art. Looking at the relationship between pottery manufacturers and these institutions will show how nineteenth-century perceptions of Scottish pottery were influenced by ideas of identity, art and education.

A wide range of museums and related organizations preserve and present Britain's technological heritage. It is not possible here to mention all of them, let alone to give each the attention it might merit. Instead, I will examine in some detail those undertakings that illustrate various approaches to museum provision and operation. The largest museum in Britain concerned with technological material is the National Museum of Science and Industry, consisting of the Science Museum in London and its outstations: the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television in Bradford and the National Railway Museum in York. The Science Museum was founded in 1857, and because of its long history has been able to amass large collections relating to power technology, transport, communications, and manufacturing, all of which combine to serve as a prime taxonomic record of industrialization in the United Kingdom.' Recent collecting has concentrated on significant post-1960 material. Together with gallery updates and redisplays, new permanent galleries, and Technology Futures exhibits, this is improving the representation of modern science, technology, and medicine throughout the museum. The National Museum of Science and Industry is classified as a museum. Such museums by definition receive the bulk of their funding from central government and hold collections of national and international significance. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, unlike England, have museums of their cultures: the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh, the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, and the Ulster Museum in Belfast. They do not specialize in the areas of science, technology, and medicine on the same scale as the National Museum of Science and Industry but do consider them as part of the whole range of subjects that constitute

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all aspects of our lives, but has also spawned new opportunities. Months of multidisciplinary, global collaboration have explored the connections between natural history collections and COVID-19. Museums have unrivalled (and still largely untapped) potential to contribute data, methods, and expertise to prediction, mitigation, and prevention efforts related to zoonotic disease outbreaks (DiEuliis et al. 2016, Dunnum et al. 2017), and there is a clear need for ongoing collaboration across (at least) microbiology, disease ecology, and natural history collections. In addition, we note that the roadblocks to effective data access and integration related to microbes and their hosts are a microcosm of the larger data landscape; solving these issues in the context of COVID-19—from liberating data from publications to ensuring digital connections between voucher specimens and all derived viral genetic sequences—will improve biodiversity data access and use more broadly. Efforts since March 2020 have promoted collaboration across disciplines, international boundaries, and continents. At iDigBio, staff updated information about genetic/genomic resources available in US mammal collections; 24 records were added and information enhanced (Cortez and Soltis 2020). The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) and the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) formed a worldwide COVID-19 Task Force (TaF). A US-led group formed the ViralMuse Task Force, working in concert with the TaF. Activities of the TaF centered on four areas: building a hub to coalesce knowledge from this group in a central location – including mining mammals-of-the-world literature, improving the metadata shared when publishing sequence data, encouraging virologists to voucher in museum collections, and gathering critical research questions around zoonotic disease from the scientific community. Through an online public event, this TaF shared work to date and critical next steps. Ongoing efforts include further refinement of metadata requirements for deposition of viral genetic data to include host specimen voucher identifiers, development of methods for better integration of bat and pathogen data from the literature and databases, analysis of community surveys, and development of webinars, symposia, and publications to report the work of the TaF. Members of the ViralMuse group worked to raise awareness of the critical value of and need for museum experts, collections data, and samples in any analyses of zoonotic events. ViralMuse members (Cook et al. 2020) stressed the need for collaborative action to: develop guidelines for keeping samples of both pathogens and hosts. develop and implement metadata requirements for physical specimens and samples. expand investment in infrastructure, both cyber and physical, to support archives of biological materials. increase communication and development of new channels of dialogue and collaboration among museum scientists, microbiologists, bioinformaticians, biomedical professionals, and disease ecologists. enhance financial support and realize strong leadership from federal agencies, international partners, and private foundations to develop proactive, multi-disciplinary approaches to future pandemics (see also da Silva et al. 2020). develop guidelines for keeping samples of both pathogens and hosts. develop and implement metadata requirements for physical specimens and samples. expand investment in infrastructure, both cyber and physical, to support archives of biological materials. increase communication and development of new channels of dialogue and collaboration among museum scientists, microbiologists, bioinformaticians, biomedical professionals, and disease ecologists. enhance financial support and realize strong leadership from federal agencies, international partners, and private foundations to develop proactive, multi-disciplinary approaches to future pandemics (see also da Silva et al. 2020). ViralMuse continues to advance these goals. To reach a broader audience, we published an article in The Conversation (Soltis et al. 2020). A new project, funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), is aimed at enhancing existing published museum specimen data relevant to one potential reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, horseshoe bats (Mast and Paul 2020). NSF has also provided support to foster continued collaboration, infrastructure development, and integration of communities of practice concerning zoonotic diseases (Soltis and Paul 2020). From a TDWG perspective, issues relating to data access, data standards, and data integration require attention. Methods to liberate data from publications need to be expanded, and proposed metadata requirements for viral genetic sequences need to be implemented by international databases and adopted by the community. A summit on collections management software could help align efforts to both store and share the necessary host-pathogen information in standards-compliant formats that support discovery, access, and citation/attribution. A new and effective communication strategy is needed to develop an integrated research community (comprising the biodiversity, collections, data science, disease ecology, microbiology, and One Health communities) and to support needed changes in standards of practice (emphasizing vouchering, data standards, and data integration).

During the Twentieth Century, foreign travel underwent a process of democratisation. Increasingly, through the development of package holidays to ever more far-flung destinations, leisure tourism for the first time allowed ordinary people to experience different cultures first hand. With the increased availability and affordability of foreign travel, actively promoted by travel agencies with strong left-wing political affiliations and supported and facilitated by international friendship societies, the number of western tourists visiting Eastern Europe multiplied through the 1960s and 1970s despite the Cold War. This paper will explore western tourism in Eastern Europe during the Cold War in a Scottish context through the material culture of travel collected during this period, focusing on the collection of Miss Eileen Crowford (1913 - 1990) held by National Museums Scotland. Miss Crowford was a life-long Edinburgh resident and an avid collector. Her collection spans the 20th century and includes a significant collection of costume jewellery, mass-produced decorative arts and travel souvenirs. Drawing upon previously unresearched material in the archive and objects acquired on her travels, both items that she bought and things that she was given or obtained as part of the travel experience, provides a case study through which to explore engagement with communist culture and politics in a Scottish context. This paper discusses how these trips were being marketed to prospective Scottish travellers, and how souvenir production and distribution, as well as conditions of access, reflect an often-mediated experience of the Soviet East.

The purpose of this scoping study is to answer the research question: What does the literature tell us about online sociability that could inform how participation in collaborative construction of digital cultural heritage (DCH) can be supported, motivated and sustained? A scoping review was conducted with the aim of building on the recent advances in research on online sociability and participatory culture. An extensive literature survey was undertaken across various disciplinary fields to gain a broad snapshot of the factors that have been found and suggested as having an influence on online sociability in collaborative projects. Relevant literature were analysed and weaved together to map a pathway with motifs that could be useful as a guide for projects working towards collaborative construction of DCH.