Hello World

Let me begin by introducing myself, my name is Adam Hotson and at the time of writing I am in the closing months of my Master's degree in Museum Studies at the University of Glasgow. This blog is partly intended as a place for me to document the work I am doing as part of my final project, partly as a place for me to showcase some of the interesting, unusual or otherwise noteworthy things that come to light during the course of the work.



Your intrepid host

My project, in brief, is to enter the details of five distinct egg collections into a database, then rebox the eggs so that they are ready for moving to a new location next year. The latter part is important as many of the eggs are in less than ideal conditions, modern best practice having surpassed the standards of ~160 years ago. Additionally the collections are to be merged and ordered taxonomically, so it's important to record which of the original five collections an egg came from and, if not already known, identify it to at least family level. I haven't yet reached the reboxing stage, but I've had some practice handling and writing on the eggs, the latter being the museum's chosen method by which to maintain ID. Labels can get lost, after all, and one egg is much like another to non-experts.

 



I got bored of writing dates. Is this the first time Gilbert and Sullivan have been written on a goose egg? We may never know

 

I've never really kept a blog before, so this will be a learning experience and I hope to improve along the way. Finally, I also have a twitter account, @TheRargian, where I'll be posting extra thoughts and observations from The Hunterian's Zoology Museum. This blog is still a work in progress, but thanks for stopping by!