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Time, Flies and the Origins of Crowdsourcing

By Mark Carnall, on 12 July 2013

Aside from jelly beans, the current Octagon Exhibition, Digital Frontiers, is dominated by objects from the Grant Museum of Zoology. Well, at least in terms of numbers because we’ve loaned this entomology drawer containing over 250 fly specimens. My colleague Nick Booth wrote about his experience of installing the objects from the collections he curates (and his experience was far more leg work than moving this single drawer was) and researching this drawer of flies in order to loan it revealed a lot of interesting information about this otherwise niche collection of insects: in natural history museums entomology collections are normally measured in the millions.

Fly specimens in drawer labelled 'From Small cabinet 3'  from the Grant Museum entomology collections

Fly specimens in drawer labelled ‘From Small cabinet 3’ from the Grant Museum entomology collections

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