Contemporary Collection Research Articles

Wybrane kolekcje historyczne z zakresu historii medycyny i farmacji we współczesnych zbiorach muzealnych i bibliotekach naukowych Stambułu – część pierwsza

Selected historical collections in the field of the history of medicine and pharmacy in the contemporary museum collections and scientific libraries of Istanbul. Part one In the collections of Turkish public scientific institutions, museums and libraries, there are extensive resources of historical artifacts connected thematically with the history of medicine and pharmacy. They include mainly manuscript books in Arabic, Persian, Turkish and also in Greek and Latin, which were gathered in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The historical and medical collections contain also numerous printed books, including critical editions of the work by the classic authors of Islamic medicine together with their translations into congressional languages. In Istanbul, we can also fi nd numerous examples of various types of devices and equipment used in connection with the treatment and production of medicines. The article consists of two parts. The first part presents the outline of the history of the evelopment of historical collections in Istanbul connected with the history of medicine and pharmacy. The second part describes selected museum facilities and collections.

Archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data: Challenges and opportunities with curating the UK web archive

In this contribution, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from memory institutions' need to redefine their archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data. We will reflect on this topic by critically examining the case study of the UK Web Archive, which is made up of the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries: the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries Oxford, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin. The UK Web Archive aims to archive, preserve and give access to the UK web space. This is achieved through an annual domain crawl, first undertaken in 2013, in addition to more frequent crawls of key websites and specially curated collections which date back as far as 2005. These collections reflect important aspects of British culture and events that shape society. This commentary will explore a number of questions including: what heritage is captured and what heritage is instead neglected by the UK Web archive? What heritage is created in the form of new data and what are its properties? What are the ethical issues that memory institutions face when developing these web archiving practices? What transformations are required to overcome such challenges and what institutional futures can we envisage?

333. Tedizolid Activity against Gram-Positive Bacterial Isolates Causing Bone and Joint Infections in the United States (2015–2019)

BackgroundProlonged systemic antibiotic courses are frequently used to manage difficult-to-treat bone and joint infections (BJI). Tedizolid has been considered as a therapy candidate for BJI in adults and children. This study assessed the in vitro activity of tedizolid and comparator agents against a contemporary collection of Gram-positive (GP) isolates causing BJI in the US.MethodsA total of 310 Staphylococcus aureus (SA), 79 β-hemolytic streptococci (BHS), 52 coagulase-negative staphylococci (CoNS), and 37 Enterococcus faecalis isolates were included in this study. These isolates were collected from patients with BJI from 30 medical centers in the US between 2015 and 2019 as a part of the Surveillance of Tedizolid Activity and Resistance (STAR) Program. Bacterial identification was confirmed by MALDI-TOF MS. MIC results were obtained by reference CLSI broth microdilution methods and interpretations used CLSI guidelines.ResultsTedizolid (MIC50/90, 0.12/0.25 mg/L) inhibited all SA at the CLSI breakpoint (≤0.5 mg/L) including methicillin-resistant SA (MRSA; 35.8% of SA; MIC50/90, 0.12/0.25 mg/L). Linezolid, vancomycin, and daptomycin had 100% susceptibility rates against SA isolates (Table). All CoNS isolates were inhibited by tedizolid at ≤0.5 mg/L. Tedizolid was active against all BHS (100% susceptible) as follows: S. pyogenes (n=24; MIC50/90, 0.12/0.25 mg/L), S. agalactiae (n=44; MIC50/90, 0.12/0.25 mg/L), and S. dysgalactiae (n= 11; MIC50/90, 0.25/0.25 mg/L). Penicillin, linezolid, vancomycin, and daptomycin also were active against BHS (100% susceptible). Tedizolid (MIC50/90, 0.25/0.25 mg/L; 100% susceptible) was 4- to 8-fold more potent than linezolid (MIC50/90, 1/1 mg/L) and vancomycin (MIC50/90, 1/2 mg/L) against E. faecalis. GP isolates resistant to oxazolidinone were not observed.ConclusionTedizolid demonstrated potent in vitro activity against this collection of contemporary GP isolates causing BJI in US hospitals. Tedizolid and comparator agents showed high susceptibility rates against the most frequent organisms and organism groups, including MRSA. These findings support the clinical development of tedizolid as an additional option for treating BJI caused by GP pathogens.Table 1 DisclosuresCecilia G. Carvalhaes, MD, PhD, A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Cidara Therapeutics (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck & Co, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Pfizer (Research Grant or Support) Helio S. Sader, MD, PhD, A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Melinta (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Paratek Pharma, LLC (Research Grant or Support)Pfizer (Research Grant or Support) Jennifer M. Streit, BS, A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Paratek Pharma, LLC (Research Grant or Support) Mariana Castanheira, PhD, 1928 Diagnostics (Research Grant or Support)A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Amplyx Pharmaceuticals (Research Grant or Support)Cidara Therapeutics (Research Grant or Support)Cidara Therapeutics (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Fox Chase Chemical Diversity Center (Research Grant or Support)GlaxoSmithKline (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck & Co, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Merck & Co, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Paratek Pharma, LLC (Research Grant or Support)Pfizer (Research Grant or Support)Qpex Biopharma (Research Grant or Support) Rodrigo E. Mendes, PhD, A. Menarini Industrie Farmaceutiche Riunite S.R.L. (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Allergan (Research Grant or Support)Basilea Pharmaceutica International, Ltd (Research Grant or Support)Cipla Ltd. (Research Grant or Support)Department of Health and Human Services (Research Grant or Support)GlaxoSmithKline (Research Grant or Support)Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Merck (Research Grant or Support)Pfizer (Research Grant or Support)

Dividing by Zero. Tautology and Paradox in the Self-Descriptions of Anonymous

This paper engages with the loosely bounded, ill-defined Anonymous movement, in order to develop a theoretical reflection on the process of self-reference within contemporary collectives. It is grounded on a socio-cybernetic framework and builds on a computationallly-assisted interpretative analysis of a huge dataset of Facebook posts related to Anonymous’ self-descriptions. As selected examples show, Anonymous results inherently contradictory. Its boundaries are radically contingent and performative, to the extent that it is impossible to distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic. The collective defines itself as ontologically multiple and radically anti-essentialist. Moreover, whereas Anonymous’ actions are systematically contradictory, Anonymous self-descriptions, relying on arguments mirroring poststructuralist theories, can only be tautologically or paradoxically expressed. Building on Luhmann’s claim that the reproduction of modern societies depends on concealing their self-referential foundations, the conclusion argues that Anonymous, by embracing its own constitutive paradox, pushes the process of autopoiesis to a new, radically recursive logic, departing in this even from recent theorizations on reflexivity.

Mapping Children’s Life-Worlds: A Content-Analytical Study of Drawings of Favourite Gifts

Abstract What children count as their favourite things tell us not only about children but also about their social and cultural experiences. This study,* based on the outcomes of a children’s drawing competition organised by the Estonian National Museum and applying a combined framework of visual sociology and participa-tory research, proposes an innovative angle to using the museum’s experimental approach to contemporary collecting of cultural heritage. This large-sample (n=926) content-analytical study of children’s favourite gifts gives a rich ethno-graphic and sociological perspective on children’s life-worlds. On the one hand, the children’s wishes reflected contemporary global trends in technology and commercialisation. On the other hand, the children’s prevailing dream of having a pet shows loneliness shaped by societal changes, including urbanisation and changing family models and time regimes.

A Bolognese collector rediscovered: Count Ludovico Caprara (1621–1695) and the seventeenth-century art market

Abstract This study concerns the discovery of a new figure in the field of seventeenth-century art collecting: Count Ludovico Caprara, a general under Ferdinand II de’ Medici. Newly discovered archival documents reveal that the Caprara family had one of the richest collections of paintings in Bologna, displayed in a palace close to the Piazza Maggiore; most of these works, however, remain untraced. Ludovico collected more than a hundred canvases, mostly portraits of contemporary painters. The discovery of a purchase note and an inventory of the picture gallery have allowed the role of Ludovico in contemporary collecting and his contacts with personalities in the art market of Seicento Bologna to be established. An attempt is made here to identify several paintings by Giovanni Andrea Sirani, Francesco Gessi and others, and to clarify certain aspects of Ludovico’s taste, especially his preference for the Bolognese school, despite spending his life at the Medici court.

Data as memory: Contemporary memory collection practices in extended interiors

This essay puts interiority to work as it examines the transformation from analogue memory collection housed in physical artifacts to the contemporary practices of digital memory collection where memory is packaged and preserved as data. Smartphones in particular offer a different mode of connectivity to extended interior spaces as technology re-defines the collection memory and the ways in which we remember. This essay follows and unravels extended interiors for how they operate shaping space and the human behaviors within those spaces.

Mobilisation of distributional data for vascular plants of Murmansk Region, Russia: Digital representation of the Flora of Murmansk Region.

BackgroundThe present-day demand for digital availability of distributional data in biodiversity studies requires a special effort in assembling and editing the data otherwise scattered in paper literature and herbarium collections, which can be poorly accessible or little understood to present-day users and especially automatic data processors. Although the vascular plants of Murmansk Region (northern part of European Russia) are well studied and represented in publications, the accessibility of this knowledge is highly insufficient. The most widely known source is the Flora of Murmansk Region (published in 1953–1966), which remains in use because of its high original quality, detailed elaboration and completeness. We consider digitising this source to be of primary importance in biodiversity studies in the Arctic Region because of its point occurrence maps, which were based on the comprehensive inventory of contemporary herbarium collections.New informationWe have compiled a dataset based on 554 printed point occurrence maps of species distributions published in the Flora of Murmansk Region, which includes 25,555 records of georeferenced plant occurrences that belong to 1,073 species and 5 hybrids. The occurrences are ultimately based on herbarium specimens kept at KPABG and LE, which were collected during 1837–1965. We estimate that these specimens represent ca. 60% of the current global herbarium holdings originated from Murmansk Region; this means that the dataset gives a fair representation of the regional flora.

From Zines of Peer Reviewed Journals: Cataloging Contemporary Pagan Resources

ABSTRACT Thinking of Pagan and Wiccan serials as grey literature does not come to mind at first. This is due to the evolution of the grey literature concept from when it first appeared. During the Third International Conference on Grey Literature in 1997, the concept underwent its first major definition change to include the production and distributed aspect of the literature. Three years later, the definition was further expanded to those issued from entities whose primary function is something other than publishing. 1 These changes allowed the folding of any non-commercial publication. Many early Pagan and Wiccan publications were created in a home office and then Xeroxed before being mailed, or they used a local jobber to print them. Subscriptions were available for those issued in the latter half of twentieth century. Acquisition of a small number of current occult publications is still via subscription; however, many have changed to a first come first served scenario. For example, issue seven (February 2020) of Fiddler’s Green Peculiar Parish Magazine was launched as a Kickstarter. Many others are announced on Facebook or email mailing lists with links to the official site to grab your copy while they last. Some are only available to members associated with the group and a smaller segment of these are limited to those studying the faith. How these publications originate and may be distributed places them solidly in the grey literature arena. In 2016, Valdosta State University acquired a large Pagan Archive made up of published and unpublished material. Cataloging of these resources has been a challenge. Authors may use pseudonyms and issues of periodicals may lack both enumeration and chronology. Knowledge of contemporary Neopaganism seems almost a necessity to adequately describe these resources. Research on associated people and groups is certainly needed. But there are other issues as well: name authorities and subject headings. A significant percentage of producers of Neopagan periodicals lack authority records. Prominent authors have name headings, but the groups they are associated with do not. Covens or stand-alone groups also lack name authorities. Occasionally, when an authority does exist for an entity, the creator of the authority record misinterpreted the verbiage on the publication, creating relationship errors to other organizations. On a positive side, Resource Description and Access (RDA) brings possibilities of linking names to the groups they are associated with. One of the most frustrating cataloging tasks is in the adding of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT). From the beginning, no Wiccan sect had been established in LCSH, even with cataloged resources in OCLC specifically on these sects. Many of the common subjects lacked appropriate subject headings. Past practice for non-SACO (Subject Authority Cooperative) libraries was just to add the broadest subject of Occultism, Paganism, or Wicca when a more specific subject heading would be beneficial to patrons. Libraries and archives in the last decade have experienced an influx of contemporary Pagan and Wiccan collections coming to them as religious leaders have begun building collections to preserve their legacy. This article will provide helpful insight on how to describe serial resources and clarify what publications show, as well as introduce some of the new MARC fields. The discussion of RDA and new MARC fields used to catalog Neopagan resources can also be applied to all serials regardless of subject.

The Periphery Is Beautiful: The Rise of the Portuguese Contemporary Art Market in the 21st Century

The aim of this article is to characterise the rise of the Portuguese contemporary art market since the beginning of the 21st century, within the broader context of the global contemporary art market. Against a theoretical backdrop of the globalisation of markets for contemporary art and the concept of the periphery, I will analyse Lisbon’s art scene as a local phenomenon that is looking for an international recognition. In doing so, I am focusing on two working hypotheses. The first relates to the efforts made by the gallery sector to raise the international profile of its artists, giving them sought-after widespread recognition, which encompasses a historical perspective on the situation and a prominent role for the younger generation of gallerists. The second intends to observe the role played by private collectors and their contributions towards boosting the art scene, assembling their contemporary art collections and making them available to the public. I conclude that this has led to an upsurge in the contemporary art market in connection with the growing number of validating structures, museums, and art centres, due mainly to the fact that the shortcomings of the public sector are being made up for by private initiatives.

L&T bags EPC contract for NTPC's CO2-to-methanol demo plant

Accurate information of path followed by vehicles at several real-life scenarios is essential for modeling and testing the optimal path for autonomous vehicles, analyzing the lateral dynamics such as lane-changing and overtaking, vehicle dynamics at the horizontal curves, intersections, and roundabouts. Recently, the availability of such data is plenty, thanks to the advancements in drone and computer-vision technologies. Nevertheless, extracting useful information from the observed data requires certain pre-processing that can handle the noises added at several stages of the data collection. The adequacy of the existing off-the-shelf smoothing techniques (e.g., Moving average, Savitzky–Golay, Kalman filter) for denoising the trajectory data of the modern era is certainly a question. The motivation for the present study is twofold. Firstly, the challenges of contemporary trajectory data collection and associated error patterns are relatively unknown, and thus an appropriate denoising technique needs to be developed. Secondly, many of the existing smoothing techniques have chosen invariant parameters across all the vehicle paths, even though the error patterns are dissimilar across the vehicles and, in the longitudinal and lateral directions. Thus, an adaptive smoothing needs to be applied for each observed vehicle path and its components. The present study proposes an adaptive, and data-driven path smoothing technique that can be universally applied to the video-based path data obtained from any camera platform (either drone or fixed camera setup). The proposed reconstruction framework works in three-stages; in the first stage, the data is prepared by resampling any missing data. Also, any outlier in the observed path data is identified and removed at this stage. In the second stage, a Recursively Ensembled Low-Pass (RELP) filter is proposed to handle the ’heavily tailed’ noise found in the video-processing based trajectory data, particularly for drone videos. A robust adaptive Gaussian kernel smoothing is applied in the third stage to have a localized reconstruction. For Kernel smoothing, the smoothing parameters such as the optimal bandwidth and polynomial order are estimated using the proposed grid-search algorithm. The parameter estimation process ensures that the bias and variance are perfectly traded-off to achieve a smooth vehicle path. The performance evaluation of the proposed method shows an internally and physically consistent trajectory reconstruction.

Vehicle path reconstruction using Recursively Ensembled Low-pass filter (RELP) and adaptive tri-cubic kernel smoother

Accurate information of path followed by vehicles at several real-life scenarios is essential for modeling and testing the optimal path for autonomous vehicles, analyzing the lateral dynamics such as lane-changing and overtaking, vehicle dynamics at the horizontal curves, intersections, and roundabouts. Recently, the availability of such data is plenty, thanks to the advancements in drone and computer-vision technologies. Nevertheless, extracting useful information from the observed data requires certain pre-processing that can handle the noises added at several stages of the data collection. The adequacy of the existing off-the-shelf smoothing techniques (e.g., Moving average, Savitzky–Golay, Kalman filter) for denoising the trajectory data of the modern era is certainly a question. The motivation for the present study is twofold. Firstly, the challenges of contemporary trajectory data collection and associated error patterns are relatively unknown, and thus an appropriate denoising technique needs to be developed. Secondly, many of the existing smoothing techniques have chosen invariant parameters across all the vehicle paths, even though the error patterns are dissimilar across the vehicles and, in the longitudinal and lateral directions. Thus, an adaptive smoothing needs to be applied for each observed vehicle path and its components. The present study proposes an adaptive, and data-driven path smoothing technique that can be universally applied to the video-based path data obtained from any camera platform (either drone or fixed camera setup). The proposed reconstruction framework works in three-stages; in the first stage, the data is prepared by resampling any missing data. Also, any outlier in the observed path data is identified and removed at this stage. In the second stage, a Recursively Ensembled Low-Pass (RELP) filter is proposed to handle the ’heavily tailed’ noise found in the video-processing based trajectory data, particularly for drone videos. A robust adaptive Gaussian kernel smoothing is applied in the third stage to have a localized reconstruction. For Kernel smoothing, the smoothing parameters such as the optimal bandwidth and polynomial order are estimated using the proposed grid-search algorithm. The parameter estimation process ensures that the bias and variance are perfectly traded-off to achieve a smooth vehicle path. The performance evaluation of the proposed method shows an internally and physically consistent trajectory reconstruction.

Collecting COVID-19 at National Museums Scotland

This opinion piece discusses National Museums Scotland’s first responses to collecting COVID-19. Drawing on perspectives from social history, biomedical science and military history, this short paper contextualizes COVID-related collecting within the contexts of the organization’s programme of contemporary collecting and the nation’s ongoing socio-political journey.

Introduction and Summary of Contents

The tenth volume in the series presents a hitherto overlooked item in the oeuvre of the famous discoverer of electromagnetism, Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851). A highly influential figure in cutting-edge science internationally, Ørsted was also active as a populariser of various kinds of academic discoveries and theories within nineteenth-century Denmark. However, no separate publication on the aurora borealis by Ørsted has been known until now. It is in one of the many contemporary collections of miscellanies for the general public – namely, in Dansk Folkekalender for the year 1841 (printed 1840) – that Kira Moss has discovered his unsigned article on “Nordlyset” [The Northern Light]. In her introduction, Moss presents evidence of Ørsted’s authorship, contextualises the place of the northern lights in Denmark in the period known as Romanticism, and presents a detailed summary of his own theory. As a supplement, she provides a complete English translation of Ørsted’s article.

Data collection methods for studying pedestrian behaviour: A systematic review

Collecting pedestrian behaviour data is vital to understand pedestrian behaviour. This systematic review of 145 studies aims to determine the capability of contemporary data collection methods in collecting different pedestrian behavioural data, identify research gaps and discuss the possibilities of using new technologies to study pedestrian behaviour. The review finds that there is an imbalance in the number of studies that feature various aspects of pedestrian behaviour, most importantly (1) pedestrian behaviour in large complex scenarios, and (2) pedestrian behaviour during new types of high-risk situations. Additionally, three issues are identified regarding current pedestrian behaviour studies, namely (3) little comprehensive data sets featuring multi-dimensional behaviour data simultaneously, (4) generalizability of most collected data sets is limited, and (5) costs of pedestrian behaviour experiments are relatively high. A set of new technologies offers opportunities to overcome some of these limitations. This review identifies three types of technologies that can become a valuable addition to pedestrian behaviour research methods, namely (1) applying VR experiments to study pedestrian behaviour in the environments that are difficult or cannot be mimicked in real-life, repeat experiments to determine the impact of factors on pedestrian behaviour and collect more accurate behavioural data to understand the decision-making process of pedestrian behaviour deeply, (2) applying large-scale crowd monitoring to study pedestrian movements in large complex environments and incident situations, and (3) utilising the Internet of Things to track pedestrian movements at various locations that are difficult to investigate at the moment.

Comparative demography of commercially important species of coral grouper, Plectropomus leopardus and P. laevis, from Australia's great barrier reef and Coral Sea marine parks.

Understanding the spatial and environmental variation in demographic processes of fisheries target species, such as coral grouper (Genus: Plectropomus), is important for establishing effective management and conservation strategies. Herein we compare the demography of Plectropomus leopardus and P. laevis between Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (GBRMP), which has been subject to sustained and extensive fishing pressure, and the oceanic atolls of Australia's Coral Sea Marine Park (CSMP), where there is very limited fishing for reef fishes. Coral grouper length-at-age data from contemporary and historical otolith collections across 9.4 degrees of latitude showed little difference in lifetime growth between GBRMP and CSMP regions. Plectropomus laevis populations in GBRMP reefs had significantly higher rates of total mortality than populations in the CSMP. Mean maximum lengths and mean maximum ages of P. laevis were also smaller in the GBRMP than in the CSMP, even when considering populations sampled within GBRMP no-take marine reserves (NTMRs). Plectropomus leopardus, individuals were on average smaller on fished reefs than NTMRs in the GBRMP, but all other aspects of demography were broadly similar between regions despite the negligible levels of fishing pressure in the CSMP. Similarities between regions in growth profiles and length-at-age comparisons of P. laevis and P. leopardus suggest that the environmental differences between the CSMP and the GBRMP may not have significant impacts on lifetime growth. Our results show that fishing may have influenced the demography of coral grouper on the GBR, particularly for the slower growing and longer lived species, P. laevis.

O cotidiano, a quebrada e o sonho: a resistência pelo olhar na ação de um fotocoletivo

Resumo Este artigo propõe refletir sobre as possibilidades enunciativas de coletivos periféricos contemporâneos, com foco na experiência do DiCampana Foto Coletivo. Criado em São Paulo, em 2016, o coletivo de fotógrafos entende a sua ação na proposta de formar uma coleção de novas imagens que mostrem a periferia sem as lentes típicas que a emolduram em estereótipos pejorativos. Categorias fenomenológicas de tempo e espaço são acionadas no percurso metodológico na tentativa de compreender a formação de sonhos e memórias na fabulação fotográfica do cotidiano das quebradas. O movimento interpretativo final é o de ler a construção de um espaço biográfico para a periferia na ação política de criar uma imagística da “periferia olhada pela periferia”. A prática fotográfica e ativista é, assim, compreendida como prática de self, de composição individual e coletiva.

Integrative taxonomic investigation ofPetaurus breviceps(Marsupialia: Petauridae) reveals three distinct species

AbstractThe Australian sugar glider, Petaurus breviceps s.l., is widely distributed across eastern and northern Australia. Examination of historical and contemporary collections of Petaurus specimens and phylogenetic analyses have revealed considerable taxonomic diversity within the genus. We aimed to utilize an integrative taxonomic approach, combining genetic and morphological evidence, to resolve the taxonomy of Australian gliders currently recognized as Petaurus breviceps. Herein, we confirm the existence of three distinct species: P. breviceps, P. notatus comb. nov. and P. ariel comb. nov.. Petaurus breviceps and P. notatus are each represented by major mtDNA lineages in P. breviceps, while P. ariel forms a sister-lineage to P. norfolcensis and P. gracilis. Subtle morphological differences distinguish P. breviceps from the closely related P. notatus, while the morphological distinctions between P. ariel and its genetically similar sister-taxa, P. norfolcensis and P. gracilis, are more obvious. Given the purported broad geographic distribution of the taxon, P. breviceps s.l. was not listed as threatened, but dividing this taxon into three species has important conservation implications for all taxa in the group, particularly given the lamentable record for mammal extinctions in Australia. Concerted and targeted conservation efforts are necessary to preserve these distinct, newly described species.

Approaches to studying library collection quality

The quality of library collection is hard to evaluate due to its non-specificity and inconstancy, as well as due to the multiplicity of evaluation specifications. Besides, within the contemporary library collection studies, the concept of “library collection quality” does not correspond with criteria and indicators being suggested. To harmonize disparate requirements and quality specifications, the author applies the polysystem approach which contemplates examining collections as an element of larger systems. Each system, with its own goals, structure and functions, offers its specific requirements. The quality of library collections is analyzed from the viewpoint of structural and functional, technological, marketing, regionological, and culturological approaches. Within every macrosystem, structural elements are defined; their impact upon library collection quality is discussed. The social systems of greater global character (culture, region, market) put forward the requirements reflecting the needs and expectations of the society on the whole, regional communities and individual consumers, correspondingly. These requirements differ depending on the collections, library type and subordination, its goals and strategies and are specified in the library collection models — used as guidelines for designing the library’s technological system. Developing the quality indicators systems for each type of collection interaction within the macrosystems for every library type should become the next stage of library collection quality studies.

Collecting the new: Major museum collections of twentieth-century Chinese painting in London and Oxford

ABSTRACT In the first half of the twentieth century, members of the public in Britain were familiar with traditional Chinese painting, but not work produced by living artists from Republican China. Public museums did not become enthusiastic about acquiring twentieth-century Chinese pictorial art until the 1960s. Substantial gifts of modern Chinese painting and calligraphy presented by private collectors to the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in the 1990s have contributed to the proliferation of associated exhibitions, illustrated catalogues and scholarly activities. This paper explores the visions and strategies of British museums in forming their collections of modern Chinese painting in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses on the institutional histories, acquisition policies and the collections of Chinese pictorial art in the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in order to examine the impetus for initiating new collecting strategies in the last quarter of the twentieth century. It also investigates the contribution of individual curators in enhancing the British understanding of modern Chinese painting through acquisitions, exhibitions and publications from the 1960s to the 1990s, which laid a strong foundation for developing vigorous programmes of contemporary collecting and display.