Shirts and Photos!

So a few updates on the site.

A.) If you click a picture you get a nice photo-viewer within the window instead of opening up a new tab. It looks much nicer and you can scroll through all the photos within each post. Enjoy!

B.) We now have T-Shirts available! If you click 'Store' above in the navigation bar you will see what styles are available. They're not very expensive, and I have a few other 'sciencey' shirts available (they cost a little more because you have to pay a little to use the design but are cheaper than buying them from the designer). If you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know!

And if you buy a T-Shirt, take a photo of yourself in it and send it to us, we'd love to see them!

Summer Symposium at the PRI

 So for those who didn't hear, the Sholesonian recently made a presentation on its collection and outreach effort at the Summer Symposium 2011 at the Paleontological Research Institute. I gave a brief overview on what I do with this site as well as giving a quick look on how to make your own insect or fossil collection. If you have any questions or want to learn more feel free to leave a comment here, on our Facebook page, or shoot us an email. I have made the presentation available for your viewing right here so enjoy!

Sholesonian Presentation

Official Logo!

So the time has finally come where we now have an official logo for the site! Special shout out thanks to Rachel who has graciously given her time to create this masterpiece.

As you can see, the six different sections represent our six different collections: an old bellows camera for our Historical & Cultural Collection, a Devonian trilobite for the Fossil Collection obviously, a beautiful butterfly marks our Natural History Collection, a chunk of quartz crystals stand for the Geology Collection, a simple U.S. quarter with the date of our founding for the Numismatics Collection, and last but not least a book open to the Sholesonian guide marks our Publications Collection.

Enjoy, and let us know what you think!

SEM Imaging

So there hasn't been many posts in awhile, it's been busy here, so I thought I would share with all of you some test images I made today using the Scanning Electron Microscope. None of these specimens are in the Sholesonian collections but it's still very cool to get up and close with these minuscule animals. I suggest you check out this site to learn how a scanning electron microscope even works. And for your reference there is a scale on all of the images, just keep in mind that a micrometer (that's what the numbers are in the Greek letter Mu is used) is 1/1000th a millimeter and thus 10-6 meters or 0.000001 meters. These things are around 500 micrometers across which is about half a millimeter. Enjoy!

A baby coral

A bryozoa (moss animal)

A cone snail

View Our Collections

While there hasn't been many posts lately, the Sholesonian has been far from stagnant. Now three of the collections have had their catalogs digitized and you the readers can now take a peek at what is in the collections. Note that the yellow highlighted numbers are open and will periodically be filled in as new specimens come in and as others are finally cataloged. Also, not everything has been identified or even has information.

The Geological Collection

The Natural History Collection

The Numismatics Collection

And be sure to Like us on Facebook to keep up-to-date!

Publications Publishing Error

Just a quick note that the last two Publications specimens had the wrong Sholesonian ID attached to them. The Air Raid kit and the Bill Black's Combo record have just been re-published to the blog with the correct identification number on them.

The museum apologizes for this error.

Now on Facebook!

So months ago the Sholesonian joined Twitter and now is officially on Facebook! We've been doing a little bit of design changing over here so you should like the Sholesonian on Facebook by checking out the new Facebook badge to the left. Also, I've added a feature that streams the latest comments also on the left so if you enjoy a particular specimen leave a comment - and the best part is you don't even need to have a Gmail account or sign in to anything to leave one.

Also, as I generally don't like posting up small posts here on the main blog I may leave some cool behind the scenes look on the Facebook page every so often. So right now you can check out this cool photo of some specimens I captured back in November, two spiders and the Boxelder bugs which are Sholesonian ID NH 075.

What's Going On

Sorry for the lack of updates, it's been busy over here. But that does not mean that things haven't been happening at the Sholesonian. My friend Dan and I have been busy at work photographing over 500 hundred of the artifacts on display and in museum storage. So just to give you a heads up and have a little fun, I chose a random photo from one of the pieces in the collections and you can take a guess as to what it is. Is it a piece from the Historical and Cultural Significance Collection or is it a more mundane piece from Geology? Does it actually belong to Coin Collections, or is it a piece of something that used to be alive? Take a shot and I'll be posting it later in the week.

Museum Errata

So going through some boxes I found my lot of labels and some of them belonged to items already posted. Thus I am posting this errata to add more data to three of the objects.

GEO 014 - Ruby Grains; The exact locality is named rather than going off the hunch I had and more details are given on what these exact grains would have been used for.

FOS 009 - Orthoceras; Location was 'To Be Determined' but it has since been determined. This fossil was found in Morocco and is of Devonian age.

HS 011 - Pocket Sundial; Added some more details on the uses/age of the reproduction.

New Display

Just a quick update on the Museum's physical manifestation. This weekend the museum has been updated with a brand new display case. As you can see many of the best permanent exhibits are now on display in this professional case, complete with glass shelving, mirror backing, and electric lights. The top shelf has on display most of the most historical artifacts while the lower part (not pictured here) has on display a more genealogical display on its top shelf.

It's just a very nice addition to the Sholesonian's display collection so that the best of what is posted up here can be on display for all to see.

Smithsonian Page

Hope Diamond

Hey everyone, because you are enjoying all these nifty specimens that I've been posting up I thought you guys might enjoy some awesome stuff about other museums. So I recommend that you all go and check out the Smithsonian Facebook Page, they've recently been posting up pictures and information in a series called Smithsonian Snapshots. These are really interesting and cool pieces in their collections that aren't on display. So far they've posted up some Woolly Mammoth flesh, Rosa Park's dress, and Pablo Picasso's handwritten list of artists. I've really been enjoying seeing what they've got and thought you all would as well.

P.S. And sorry about not posting anything up recently, it's study week here and finals are on their way. But don't worry there will be more posts to come. And sorry for the poor quality of the hope diamond, but I had only like a 2 megapixel camera the last time I was at the Smithsonian.

Tweet Tweet

The Sholesonian is now on Twitter.

Seeing as how some people don't want to keep checking the website only to find I have yet to post something for the day, I have decided to create a Sholesonian Twitter account where the newest post will be 'tweeted.' I also have the Twitter account following over a dozen top science accounts to keep you all posted on the latest breakthroughs and discoveries.

So enjoy and Follow Us!

How This Is Going To Work

As I await my photo studio, soon to arrive, to take some professional-looking pictures of the museum collections, I will post the cataloging system I'm going to be using. I am going to break down the entire museum, the Sholesonian if you will, into a couple of 'colleges.' Each specimen is going to be labeled, or be boxed/bagged/bottled with a label, with a 2-3 letter code and a number. The following list explains the colleges I am going to be using.

FOS ### - These will be the fossils that I have acquired over the years.

NH ### - The natural history section, basically if it was alive at one time and isn't a fossil it will be going into this category.

PUB ### - A relatively small collection, certain publications, literature, etc. will be placed into this group.

CC ### - I was really big into numismatics about 5 years ago, and I still go around collecting coins so monetary units will be placed here. Also the few stamps I have.

HS ### - Items of historical and/or cultural significance will be placed here including antiques.

GEO ### - Rocks, minerals, and sands basically.

PC ### - Collection numbers that hold a personal significance. Most of these probably won't end up on here.

G ### - These are reserved for honorary pieces that I do not personally own but wish I could. Will probably be photos I've taken of specimens at real museums. Check the links on the side bar for more information about them.

And I think that just about covers it. And just to hold you over if you are just visiting here is a photograph of a small section, though the most prominent, of the museum. Eventually they will all be cataloged and up for display.

Coming Soon!

First Item Coming Mid October 2010