Sharon Touzel: Bibliographic Librarian

How long have you worked at the NHM?

I began in 2007, so 6 years.

What were you doing before you came here?

I was studying, and volunteering as an Assistant Archivist at LAARC (the archaeological archives of the Museum of London). The volunteering was great – in one box, a Roman shoe; in the next, a medieval horse skull.

What does your average day look like?

I might spend time buying books for the Entomology Library, or working on projects with external academic visitors.

Mainly though, I spend a lot of time cataloguing our collections. It’s not a dull job here - today I’ve catalogued an 1870s Austrian sales catalogue, advertising plaster heads & preserved frogs; 1930s newspaper cuttings on a secret journey through Forbidden Arabia; and 1970s reports on the Loch Morar monster. Finding items like these means I always have something to put on our Twitter feed!

If you had to pick one favourite from the L&A collections what would it be?

The flea etching from Robert Hooke’s Microscopy, or some of our relatively unknown 17th century Dutch art.

Do you have a favourite place or object on display in the Museum?

I love the piece of the moon in the Earth Galleries. Walking past it every morning gives me a real kick.

If you had to spend the rest of your life as an animal, what would it be and why?

As an Entomology librarian, it’s tempting to say I’d like to be one of those brain eating parasites which make zombies out of ants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis) . However, I’d probably go for something much more boring, like a domestic cat!