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Meet Your Tour Guide: Allie

My name is Allie. I want to help bridge the gap between science and people. Scientists are often on the front lines of communicating current research to public audiences. With their knowledge and credibility they are able to dispel false information and misconceptions - which often finds its way into  public discussion. Effective science communication provides the public with a better understanding about topics ranging from health to environment.  As a result, society benefits as a whole. Unfortunately, scientists often lack the training to effectively communicate science to non-scientists. Researchers used to rely on conferences and papers to communicate their science, but now the conversation has moved outside of these two forms of communication. Now it is important for scientists to know how to create meaningful online conversations and connections with scientists and the wider public in a way that wasn’t possible before. My goal is to inform, educate  and rai...
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Museums are like libraries



What’s the biggest difference between a museum and a library? Is it that one collects books, while the other collects objects? Or maybe it’s that one has a librarian, while the other has a collection manager? I will give you a hint. It has to do with a  guy named Dewey. Melvil Dewey  was a librarian who developed the ideas for a library classification system in 1873. You may know this system by the name of the Dewey Decimal system.  With the Dewey Decimal System,  books are arranged  by their topics. The system uses numerical values  and give books shelf book numbers. Why is this important? It is important for people to understand how books are numbered - so they can locate them on the shelves. This helps to make libraries more efficient and more effective. Most libraries around the world use this system or a similar system. It is practically universal. Unfortunately, museums do not have a similar universal filing system. In my previous post - I wrote about the back of the house in museums. The back of the house is similar to a library. Well, every museum has it own cataloging strategy. It could look like this:



Most museums do not have the budget or manpower to adequately catalogue all the specimen they have collected. This can be an issue for researchers. If fossils were found  50, 60 years ago,  and have not been filed, they are invisible to researchers. “Invisible” fossils are also referred to as “dark data.” Dark data can hinder research. For instance, if there is a specimen that could give vital information to a researcher, but they can’t locate it - that’s a problem.

This is why the National Science Foundation has been funding the effort to digitize specimens and natural history collections. This is a great start. The enormous amount of specimen, artifacts and fossils in collections can make it complex to aggregate the data linked to museum collections. Most of these items were collected before computers and the internet were even invented - because of this there is a lot of “dark data” that is waiting to be seen by everyone.  being computerized and put in a virtual space  will make it easier for more of the world’s treasures to never be forgotten again. How awesome is that?

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