Dear colleagues. The management of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle recently decided to relocate the collection to a different place, namely Dijon approx. 250 km away from Paris. While for collection staff a journey of 2 hrs to travel to the proposed site may only be seen as a nuisance by many, the main point is that research teams of the museum will be disconnected from the collection. In their day-to-day work curators and collection staff need immediate access to collections in order to respond to external enquiries in a timely manner. Equally research staff, PhD and master students working with specimens deposited in the collection need unrestricted access to accomplish the tasks of their projects. They all will work in Paris while the collection is in a distant location. Staff of the museum recently started a petition on change.org to nullify the management's decision. They published an open letter in French -courtesy of Alain Dubois (MNHN) an Engish version is attached- detailing their reasoning behind it. Please follow this link and give your support to their plea: https://chng.it/sKR4pLZSdJ Save the Paris Museum collections!
Sauvons les collections du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle!
Keywords: zoology, botany, paleontology, museum
Firmada la petición. Ánimo y suerte. Os ampara la razón.
Francisco Carrasco
Subdirector del MGSB
Barcelona
ESPAÑA
www.mgsb.es
Apoyo brindado a ustedes con esta petición. Adelante y ánimos!
signed. Given that some historic collections in the museum didn't get the attention they needed in the past, a relocation would be an additional, disintegrating factor. Especially collections in fluid not readily accessible by staff are prone to be lost in such cases.
Hi.
I signed the petition some minutes ago. Good luck with it...
Best regards from the Canaries.
shared. I've visited the herbarium (P) to use their collections twice.
It makes no sense for a researcher to be separated from his/her material by 250 km, especially if the research is to continue for an extended period and involve several taxa!
What a senseless decision. We are truly living hard times for taxonomic research if this happens to one of the most important repositories of the world's biodiversity.
Before I sign:
What is it really about? I´ve read the englsih letter (btw. startin an international petition with a french-only text is not really smart). In the text they talk about collections and then about a zoo... So what material is it that we are talking about? Live stock? Specimen in Alcohol? Is it only about the zoological collection? Is this collection also completely digitised as is the P herbarium? I have questions...
A similar and equally short-sighted, taxonomic research-undermining process is underway at the Natural History Museum in London. It is a fast way to do enormous harm to our discipline, just when the biodiversity crisis accelerates and we need more effective, accessible science.
I'd be glad to sign a petition to express my profound dismay at the situation in Paris. However, I don't see an obvious way to sign. Is it proposed that we reply to the email at the end? Or is there a more standard petition set up for verified online signers? Also, the 'ask' is not very clear to me, nor who it will be submitted to and if there are deadlines.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication