Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum

I loved this book, but holy crap I can't believe it's taken me this long to read it. I don't think it's ever taken me this long to finish a book.

If you love museums, if you love natural history, if you've ever thought the idea of getting lost in the back rooms of a museum sounded like something you'd put on your bucket list, I think you'll enjoy this book. Mr. Fortey manages with very few words to make the reader feel like they've toured the back rooms of the Natural History Museum (London) and met some of the more colourful characters to have graced it's halls in the last several decades.

I'm definitely going to re-read this one at some point in the near future: I feel like I probably didn't do the book full justice by trying to read show more it while I'm on holiday and helping out my friend while her hand heals. The writing is dense and there's a lot to take in (in a good way) and I'd have gotten even more out of it had I been able to fully focus. But I did enjoy it thoroughly and would gladly recommend it. show less

This book is fabulous, and I tried to do it justice by researching and linking some pictures from the Natural History Museum. But I can't be bothered to fuss with GR's system and annotating my references.

Blog review with pictures: https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/the-secret-life-of-the-natural-histor...

Text review:

Fortey had me hooked with the idea of the behind-the-scenes maze at the British Museum. There’s something about that that appeals to me; not only knowing the stories, but the physicality of the space. In my first few years working at the hospital, I used to delight in knowing the back stairwells and unused corridors one could take to get from one decade of the building to another. How could a building like this not show more be filled with hidden mysteries?

Inside the Spirit Collection, Natural History Museum http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/daytime-events/talks-and-tours/spirit-col...

“Tucked away, mostly out of view, there is a warren of corridors, obsolete galleries, offices, libraries and above all, collections. This is the natural habitat of the curator.“

It is a historical tour of the museum, staff and taxonomy by a knowledgeable, urbane, humorous guide. Fortey was hired as a Junior Researcher (specializing in trilobites, as one does) in 1970 and has been there ever since–even past his retirement in 2006. He is clearly a wit, apparent most often in the early chapters. In one anecdote, he shares his reaction to timekeeping requirements:

“The diary was a hangover from the early days of the Museum, being a little book into which the employee was supposed to write his activities, morning and afternoon, and which was collected every month and signed off by the head of the department… I took to writing “study trilobites” on the first day of the month and ditto marks for the rest of it.”

I devoured the first part of this book. I meant to read just a chapter before bed, a way of lulling my brain into imaginative sleepiness without catching me up into murders and anti-heroes, but Fortey’s enthusiasm engaged me. He clearly loves taxonomy and biology, and has a deep respect for the research process. Although he is generally apolitical, he does occasionally allow himself commentary on problematic aspects of the history of museums, the history of science and politics influencing research. He shares minor scandals about researchers, stories of discoveries, and anecdotes about the space inside the museum. In many ways, much of it is about the history of science and of taxonomy as much as a museum.

“Science is often like this: an idea has been around for a while before new evidence suddenly pushes it forwards. And then researchers start to think: maybe this example is not so surprising after all.”

From the herb collection in the Botany Department http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/collections/our-collections/plant-collect...

I confess, like a number of enthusiasts who’ve illegally sampled collections, I felt a little bit of atavistic greed when he talked about the Herbarium. I probably shouldn’t be allowed in there.

I stumbled at the section on bugs. I just could not read it before bed, no matter how engaging the story, particularly when he mentions their connection to forensics. Sill, I regained my footing as he continued with typical humor. The mineralogy section is perhaps the least engaging for both of us, though he does his best to liven it up with stories about gems and meteorites. There’s a nod to modern equipment and the machines in this section, which was the only place I skimmed–about 3 pages in total–because of the specificity and complexity of material. For the rest of it, Fortey deftly explains in a way that anyone can understand.

There’s something supremely eerie about the idea we can catalog life by reducing it to it’s essential, whether through description of DNA or through the “type” specimens, the first and ideal type of a thing described. I remember the first time I opened a drawer at my college’s biology department and saw specimen upon specimen of dead bird.

Diptera collection, from Natural History Museum http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/collections/our-collections/invertebrate-...

To be fair, I think Fortey understands life can’t be conceptualized down to its representation:

“Modern methods of characterizing species employ molecular sequencing to identify a characteristic part of the DNA… But this process leaves out everything else. Every species has its own tale, a story about how it earns its living , meets its mate or warns off its enemies: the interesting stuff. You don’t understand London just by reading the names in the telephone directory.”

The summary looks back at some of the influencers, for better or for worse, and includes a mention of significant female researchers while noting the sexism of the system. He finalizes with a bit of a lament about the requirements of funding and its effect on ‘pure’ research. However, there’s a note of hope–the very fact that so much information is available by way of the internet and through collaborations, we might once again see the rise of the amateur enthusiast contributing to the knowledge base. Overall, a fascinating and entertaining look through the corridors and boxes in one man’s memories in the British Natural History Museum, as well as the future of taxonomy.

“I could not suppress the thought that the storeroom was like the inside of my head, presenting a physical analogy for the jumbled lumber room of memory… This book opens a few cupboards, sifts through a few drawers. A life accumulates a collection: of people, work and perplexities. We are all our own curators.”
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I would not have expected any book titled Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (Knopf, 2008) to send me into contortions of laughter. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it so well. In this volume, retired paleontologist (aka Tribolite Man) Richard Fortey takes us on an across-the-centuries, behind-the-galleries tour of London's Natural History Museum in a way that only a true insider could do. Fortey's affection and respect for the institution where he spent his career are in evidence from the first page to the last, but those feelings are, thankfully, augmented by a healthy scientific skepticism of the "official history" and a twinkly-eyed admiration for a good bit of gossip.

The reader first accompanies Fortey on show more a ramble through the museum's back channels, where we visit the various scientific departments and learn something of not only their functions but also of those who have performed the functions over the decades, true characters most. Fortey is almost never at a loss for an amusing aside about one famed scientist or another, from the fellow who catalogued bits of used string (by size, of course) and kept them in file boxes around his office to the curator who nearly bowled over the Director and King George VI while running to a water fountain in order to quench a burning pan of sausages he'd been clandestinely cooking over his bunsen burner. A riff on scientists who seemed to bear uncanny resemblances to their chosen subjects of study had me in stitches, as did several of Fortey's paragraph-ending one-liners and picture captions.

Fortey displays a remarkable ease with his subjects, writing as lucidly about his trilobites as about birds, minerals, skeletons, museum administration, and literature (he compares the Museum itself to Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, for example, and draws ably on other great literary figures from Poe to Dryden to T. S. Eliot).

For all its humor, Fortey's book is also a paean to the value of scientific research and museum scholarship, which he sees slipping away in these days of branding, financial strife and obsession with bells and whistles rather than the hard slog of careful research. He's quite right to sound that alarm, of course, and I hope his clarion call is heard loud and clear by those with the power to do something about it.

Every institution of a certain age has its share of past (and usually current) characters; and each one deserves a book like this to share them with the rest of us.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2008/10/book-review-dry-storeroom-no-1.html show less

Themes: natural history, conservation, research, weird science
Setting: The Natural History Museum in London, England

Ever read books where they talk about going up to the British Museum for the day? Well, the British Museum is now the Natural History Museum (and a few other spin-offs) and Fortey takes the reader behind the scenes for an insider's view on what really goes on in such a huge museum.

Fortey started his career as a biologist back when the museum was a slightly stuffier and more serious place, and only retired a few years ago, by which time the museum had become more of an attraction and began updating exhibits to attract paying guests. But the focus remains on the science. However, his book isn't really just about the history show more of the museum, its contributions to English scientific understanding and so on, but rather his own experiences, acquaintances, his explorations of all the hidden little corners of the vast building, and the gossip about the many folks who work there.

And what juicy gossip there is! You wouldn't think that there would be much room for racy anecdotes among the dry and serious types who work at the museum, but wow, you would be so wrong. This and the Shakespeare book both convince me that gossip was much more interesting before it started revolving around which celebrity was sleeping with whom, which had an eating disorder, and who is feuding with whom.

For his format, he starts with the collections of the museum, from mammals and plants and insects (lots of great stories there) to minerals and then the nuts and bolts of how such a place is run and what it takes to keep it going. The book is full of quirky personalities, which makes it so much more fun to read. He does stick his own opinions in there about evolution and religion, about the need to preserve every single species no matter how obscure, about the damage human beings are doing to the planet, about his political views, but he keeps those parts fairly brief and gets on with the more interesting stories of people he has met and colorful characters from the museum's past. I really enjoyed one. Recommended. show less

This an an absolutely fascinating look behind the scenes of the Natural History Museum. Fortey's erudite and humorous descriptions are wonderfully entertaining - irrespective of whether he is writing about people, expeditions or the strange habits of small and revolting creatures. As we're led through the labyrinthine recesses of the NHM, we're taken on a delightful journey through taxonomy, palaeontology, biology, botany, entomology, mineralogy - and any number of other ologies which were never this interesting at school. The discussion of museum politics is intriguing, and that of the crisis in funding is informative; the scientific content is engrossing, as is the information about the remarkable people who undertook the work.

(A word show more of advice, though - probably best to avoid reading the opening pages of the chapter on insects while eating lunch.) show less

Six-word review: Scientist reveals natural history's scholarly side.

Extended review:

Behind the vast galleries of exhibits at London's Natural History Museum, formerly part of the British Museum, is an even vaster labyrinth unseen by the public. Its halls and burrows and storage spaces house the millions of organic and inorganic specimens that make up the ever-growing collections gathered for study and classification by one of the world's major scientific institutions.

The author, a retired trilobite man, knows this world intimately. His years of employment in the paleontology section encompass the changeover from a traditional bastion of scholarly disciplines administered and populated by scientists to a grant-funded public attraction show more backed by crisp labs of white-coated computer operators. The legacy of the older model, whose passing clearly grieves the author, is preserved in the collections even as new information accumulates in other media.

Rich with anecdotes, character sketches, history, and detailed information about various zoological, botanical, and mineral specimens, including the complex and fraught sciences of taxonomy and nomenclature, Fortey's highly readable book claims only to be his own personal collection--his dry storeroom: an idiosyncratic accumulation of knowledge, lore, personalities, and memories garnered over a long career in the practice of science. Entertaining and informative are equally apt terms for this window on a world most of us will never see. show less

This was my favourite of the Fortey books I've read. Essentially an elegy to the grand natural history museum, whose peculiarities and closeted eccentricities are disappearing in a world of computer-assisted taxonomy and interactive galleries. Fortey began his career in a very different world, and conveys through charming anecdotes what made museums special, as well as why they're still important.