Dear GCG members,
On behalf of the GCG Committee, it is my pleasure to inform you that the overwhelming majority of members who voted on our name change (online, in person, and ahead of time by dedicated webmail) agreed with the suggestion to become the Geological Collections Group.
Going forward, we feel confident that this new name, still with the acronym GCG, will be more inclusive of all those in our community that work or volunteer with geological collections. The Committee sincerely hopes that those who preferred to keep our original name will understand that we have put a lot of thought into it, and really feel that this is a very positive change.
Please bear with us whilst our incredible Committee, all of whom are volunteers, works behind the scenes to update things accordingly.
The 2024 Winter Seminar and AGM was thoroughly enjoyed (judging from the feedback!) by all who attended. We are now looking for a host venue for 2025. If you’re interested in holding an event with GCG then please get in touch with our Programme Coordinator Mark Evans via
With best wishes,
Emma
Chair of the Geological Collections Group
20th November 2024
This is also a good time to point out that you can join GCG right now by heading to the membership tab on this website. Membership starts at just £20 and if you join now your membership will be extended to run until the end of 2025.
It is our GREAT pleasure to announce the details of the Geological Curators Group Winter Seminar and AGM!
Theme: Reciprocal Relationships: how can partnerships help us and our collections develop?
Venue: Oxford University Museum of Natural History
Dates: 11th-13th November 2024, including evening icebreaker, presentations, workshops, AGM, conference dinner, and field trip
Further details are on the website here
Registration deadline: 31st October 2024
Today (17th May 2024) marks with 50th Birthday of the Geological Curators Group. A group of members, both long-standing and newcomers to the group, will be celebrating in Leicester. Lookout on this website for photos and a report from the event.
Thanks to our Journal full text search project you can read (and even cite using a DOI...) the minutes of the inaugural meeting here
To mark our birthday, we have commissioned a new logo and are pleased to be able to unveil it to you here. It is the result of a design competition run amongst our membership, and feel that the new design will help us to modernise our brand appearance.
It will take us a while to update all of our channels to show the new logo, but we will be doing this over the course of the summer. In the meantime, if you would like to get in touch with us, you can contact
With great sadness we have just learned that long time GCG member and friend, Martin Warren of Cromer died aged 72, on 30th April after a long battle with cancer.
Martin Roger Warren graduated from the University of Leicester with a degree in Geology as well as gaining the Museum Studies diploma. He was initially employed for two years as a curator at the University of Strathclyde, then from 1978 to 1999 he was curator of two museums in Norfolk. He was mostly based at the delightful little Cromer Museum, but was also responsible for Walsingham Museum. He was heavily involved in the excavation of the West Runton Mammoth skeleton, made enormous contributions to the knowledge of the Cromer Forest Bed, led numerous fieldtrips, gave talks and helped set up the Sheringham Museum as well. He was heavily involved in piloting the early digitisation of collections documentation across Norfolk, and between 1999 and 2010 he took on the role as Collections and Information Manager with the Norfolk Museums Service in Norwich running their documentation, conservation and digitisation programmes across 12 Norfolk museums. Even after retiring at the age of 60, he still continued to lead local geological walks and was a great ambassador for geology and the interpretation of the landscape. He had a great interest in flint knapping and was very proud of his own efforts in that field.
In addition, he ran the successful Poppyland microbrewery in Cromer for over seven years, and was also very involved in documenting the detailed history and patterns of the knitted fisherman’s ‘Ganseys’ through his blogs and personal Northfolk Project website. He was keen on gardening and was recently pleased to report on the good progress of his home-germinated orange and lemon bushes.
Martin was an incredibly friendly and welcoming person, with a sometimes-wicked sense of humour, and always happy to receive visitors with a smile. He was an active member of GCG for many years and welcomed the group to a most enjoyable meeting in Cromer in 1990. Many older GCG members will remember Martin with great fondness. We send our condolences to his wife Steff, and family.
DiSSCo UK is a £155 million, 10-year programme to digitise natural science collections held in the UK
The Secretary for State for Science, Innovation and Technology has announced that the Natural History Museum will lead a major new project, DiSSCo UK, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to digitise a critical mass of the UK’s natural science collections.