Dariusz Iwan

The aim of the study was to analyse the content of museum labels from various periods in terms of their usefulness in creating new labels for exhibits included in museum collections. Nearly 5,000 museum labels from the years 1811 to 2017 were reviewed, for exhibits at the Museum of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Herbarium of the University of Wroclaw, and the Museum of Forensic Medicine at the Medical University of Wroclaw. On the basis of the collected information, an attempt was made to develop a ‘universal label’template, including a range of necessary information from the point of view of managing and maintaining the accessibility of the relevant collection.

During the Second World War, the State Zoological Museum in Warsaw (PMZ) suffered severe losses. Many workers were killed, and parts of the zoological and book collections were stolen by the Germans as early as 1939. The Museum became an important centre of the resistance movement, as it became a storage for weapons, explosives, and chemicals used for sabotage. Despite the repressions, the Museum employees tried to continue their work under the occupation and developed a modern model for the functioning of this institution to be implemented after the war. In the archives of the Museum and Institute of Zoology, a folder was found containing the documentation of the surveys conducted in 1941–1942 on the organisation of work and the future structure of the PMZ. This article presents the first analysis of these documents, which turned out to be a valuable source of information on the functioning of scientific institutions during the occupation, as well as on the history of the PMZ itself.

In 1887 Ksawery Branicki founded a zoological museum. The private institution was to protect Warsaw’s natural collections against possible confiscation by the Russian authorities during anti-Polish repressions. The museum existed for 32 years until it was passed to the Polish nation in 1919, and the National Museum of Natural History was created. Jan Sztolcman managed the Branicki Museum throughout its entire existence. This museum was one of the most important zoological collections in Europe, especially famous for its rich ornithological collections from South America and Asia. The article analyses available, today very fragmented, sources of knowledge about the history of the Branicki Museum, and also presents the hitherto unknown correspondence of Jan Sztolcman with Benedykt Dybowski on the exchange of specimens between the Branicki Museum and the Museum of the University of Lwow.