Stones, Sharks and Steno’s De Solido
Written by Ted Simonds, Graduate Trainee Library Assistant. Today is #OldRockDay, a day to celebrate all things old, rocky, and fossilised. The library of Herbert Leader Hawkins (1887 – 1968), professor of geology at the University of Reading, forms our Hawkins Collection, which contains rare books on the history of geology, palaeontology and echinoderms. There […]
A cabinet of curiosities : Ole Worm’s ‘Museum Wormianum’ (1655)
Written by Fiona Melhuish, UMASCS Librarian The history of public museums is also a history of private collectors and collecting, as many of the world’s oldest museums began as the personal collections of wealthy individuals and families. Some of these collections took the form of ‘cabinets of curiosities’ (also known in German as wunderkammer or wonder-rooms), […]