Vol 25, no 3, October - The Linnean Society of London

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THE LINNEAN 2009 VOLUME 25(3)
Library
I am delighted to report that our bid to the Wellcome Trust, for funding to catalogue
the correspondence of Sir James Edward Smith, was successful. As a consequence, a
lot of our time and energy over the past few months has gone into planning for the
start of the project. The advertisement has gone out for an Archivist to work here parttime
for nine months and we hope to have the successful candidate in post by mid- to
late October. Cataloguing of the letters will be the first stage in making this material
much more accessible and links will be created from the catalogue records to other
resources, such as the biographical and biological content already available in databases
created for the Linnaean and Smithian biological collections. Once the cataloguing is
completed, we shall be looking for funding for the conservation and eventual digitisation
of the letters.
The digitisation of the Linnaean insect collection has now been completed and the
last of the specimens were returned to the Society in July. It is hoped that the images
will go up online later this year after they have been checked and all the relevant data
has been attached.
During the summer, we became concerned about changes in the appearance of the
Collier portrait of Charles Darwin, which hangs in the Meeting Room. The canvas
seemed to have developed some gentle undulations. We consulted a picture conservator
who recommended that the canvas needed re-lining and that the work should be carried
out without too much delay. We agonised over losing Darwin during his anniversary
year, but it was decided that the work could not wait. The portrait has had to be
removed to the conservator’s studio and some of you will have seen the forlorn empty
frame hanging in the Meeting Room. We expect that the work will be completed and
Darwin will be back in his rightful place by mid-October.
Several other items from the Society’s collections have also been on the move
recently. The Lincecum letter that was on loan to the Darwin exhibition at the Natural
History Museum was safely returned to us in April when the exhibition closed. The
focus then switched to items associated with Robert Brown, President of the Society
from 1849-1853. Professor Cutler transported Robert Brown’s microscope to Kew in
order to re-create the experiment which resulted in the discovery of Brownean
Movement. The experiment was filmed and formed part of the programme The Cell
which was broadcast in August. The Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge
has borrowed Brown’s seal for the exhibition Darwin the Geologist which opened at
the beginning of July.
Requests for tours of the Society’s rooms and collections are on the increase. We
have given tours to the usual summer school groups from Michigan, Harvard, Georgia
and Maryland and we have also hosted visits from the Anglo-Swedish Group, the
Stanmore Strollers, Kensington and Chelsea National Trust Group, the London
Committee of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Friends of Sydney Botanic Gardens, the
British Association of Paper Historians and library staff from the Royal Society, the
London Library and Kings College Special Collections.
Members of the Library staff have recently attended two excellent seminars at the
Royal Society; one examining the interpretation of museum exhibits and displays and