Europe’s stored biodiversity: access and preservation

Thursday 25 September  14.30–16.00 Flett Events Theatre

Join Dr Rob Huxley from the Natural History Museum and other key speakers for an overview of Europe-wide projects aimed to ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of natural history collections.

For more than 10 years, the Natural History Museum has been an active participant and leader in a number of Europe-wide, collections-related projects. These projects have delivered tools, procedures and training to raise standards in collections management and preservation.

This seminar will focus on SYNTHESYS, a series of EU-funded consortium projects providing support for research access to collections. Its partners are members of the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), an umbrella organisation linking more than 30 institutions with a strong commitment to collections standards and access. A CETAF working group, the Collections Policy Board (CPB) has, for example, delivered common principles for collections loans and visitor access, and hosted workshops on digitisation.

CPB and SYNTHESYS have also identified a need for standardised approaches to collections training and staff development. This has been picked up through EuColComp, a two-year Leonardo da Vinci Programme-funded project to develop a set of universal multi-language competencies and a training curriculum for collections staff.

Who should attend

The seminar is open to all museum professionals. We welcome colleagues from other institutions.

There is no booking fee. If you would like to attend please email: julie.reynolds@nhm.ac.uk.

Tea and coffee will be available after the talk.

Natural History Museum staff do not need to book.

What it will include

• overview of SYNTHESYS, EuColComp
• presentation of practical case studies
• discussion of future developments and opportunities