Challenges for Directors of University Natural Science Museums

Commentary: Roles, opportunities, and challenges—science museums engaging the public in emerging science and technology

Even a cursory reading of the public engagement in science (PES) literature over the past decade reveals that public engagement is becoming part of the ‘‘orthodoxy of 21st century science policy’’ (Stilgoe, Nanodialogues: experiments in public engagement with science, 2007, p 16), Moving forward, there appears to be strong consensus that (1) public engagement is an essential component for shapi...

Federating Natural History Museums in Natural Europe

An impressive abundance of high quality scientific content about Earth’s biodiversity and natural history available in Natural History Museums (NHMs) around Europe remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers, such as: the lack of interconnection and interoperability between the management systems used by museums, the lack of centralized access through a European point of reference l...

Benefits and challenges of incorporating citizen science into university education

A common feature of many citizen science projects is the collection of data by unpaid contributors with the expectation that the data will be used in research. Here we report a teaching strategy that combined citizen science with inquiry-based learning to offer first year university students an authentic research experience. A six-year partnership with the Australian phenology citizen science p...

Explaining Life: Microorganisms in Science Museums

UDMGrid: A Grid Application for University Digital Museums

Because the eighteen online university digital museums of China confront a problem that the multi-discipline resources at digital museums are isolated and dispersed without sufficient interconnection, ChinaGrid (China Education & Research Grid) supports a project named UDMGrid (University Digital Museum Grid), which studies a grid application for University Digital Museums using grid technology...