This one-day workshop (for SHARE East) was held in May 2014 at Cambridge University's Museum of Zoology, during the packing phase of their decant and refurbishment programme (with help from museum staff Matt, Natalie and Vicky).

Content:

Collection scale
Health and safety issues specific to natural history collections
How do you assess the packing and transportation needs of a whole collection full of diverse material?
Case studies:
- Colchester and Ipswich Museums' natural history stores
- Lapworth Museum of Geology
- Cambridge Museum of Zoology
Moving whole collections: labelling, documentation, transport, staffing, security etc.

Individual specimen scale
Packing and moving articulated skeletons (from hummingbirds to finback whales)
Packing and moving fossils, molluscs, skins, taxidermy and fluid-preserved specimens etc.


This workshop was not held in an office revolving solely around powerpoint presentations but involved discussions, watching work in progress, handling specimens and taking a tour of all the Zoology Museum stores to see work in progress as staff and volunteers assessed, documented, cleaned and packed 4,000,000 specimens ready to be moved into new stores.

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