This paper looks at the processes employed to create the Museum of Liverpool. We wanted a museum that is story-led; relevant; that captures the personality of the people of Liverpool; that involves local people; that is full of dialogue, voices and emotion; that is flexible, intelligent, active; and which changes the way people think about the city and themselves; that is primarily for local people, not tourists.
We believe we have set new standards for a city museum, created a new type of city museum: one that is democratic and emotional. It is full of opinion, of politics, of debate. It has broken a number of museum taboos. But it is a museum that is loved by the people of Liverpool.
The Liverpool context is difficult, with high levels of poverty, and this is relevant to the creation of the museum. Over the last 200 years Liverpool has been transformed from one of the world’s richest cities to one of the poorest in Europe, though great wealth and extreme poverty have always coexisted among the city’s population. Through these experiences, Liver-
pudlians have developed an attitude, one forged through diversity and change, opportunity and adversity. Liverpudlians see themselves as different, and independent, with a fair degree of scepticism for authority. Liverpool people – Liverpudlians – have a strong self-image. Economics, migration, location, events and a distinct cultural heritage have contributed to our identity.
We at National Museums Liverpool feel that we have created a city museum that is also a human rights museum – on the grounds that urban life can be characterised as being detrimental to human rights, in terms of the inevitability of inequality and various forms of discrimination. The modern museum is a very different entity for the model that became so familiar to us in the 19th and 20th centuries.
 

During 2013, the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) introduced an innovative research internship initiative aimed at early career academic researchers. The Connecting with Collections (CwC) scheme offered six interns from British universities the opportunity to gain hands-on museum experience, while working independently on individual research projects within the collections of the UCM consortium.
This paper presents: 1. An Overview of Connecting with Connections Scheme: programme rationale, aims and funding, recruitment and project choice. 2. Training and Opportunities: group training sessions, as well as snapshots of individual experiences within the museums and 3. Internship Outputs: including an end-of-internship Symposium and other outcomes for interns. It briefly surveys the six internship projects before drawing some conclusions about the CwC programme and highlighting some of the debates around the future direction of the internship scheme for UCM.
 

University museums in Poland, like most similar institutions throughout Europe, are generally museums of the history of the academic establishments in which they were created. The University Museum in Toruń is different in this respect. It was established in 2005 out of the need to take care of already existing museum collections, first of all the works of art by Polish artists living abroad and of artists of the Vilnius and Toruń schools. It is not that the Museum doesn’t deal with the documentation of the history of science in Vilnius and in Toruń, but its science collection is only marginal.
 

The article is an attempt at presenting Professor Karol Estreicher’s idea of a Museum in the Collegium Maius. Recalling the history and successive steps of the museum creation, mainly based on the Professor’s Diaries, the author tries to find out whether Professor Estreicher’s dream about a university museum came true in reality.
 

This article is devoted to the analysis of the portrait of an unknown architect from the collection of the Jagiellonian University Museum. A compass in his right hand and a project in gothic or neogothic style suggest an architect meanwhile the dress on the model is chacteristic for the first decade of the 20 c. Finaly it was discovered that the model was an excellent architect Teodor Talowski, also the temple visible on the project within this portrait was identyfied as the church of St. Elisabeth in Lwów. Next question was the identity of the painter.
It was possible to discover the correspondence between the painter Tadeusz Popiel with Teodor Talowski revealing that the architect was an intermediary between the painter, Popiel and the professors of Lwów Polytechnic in ordering their portraits. While it seemed certain that he did paint the portait in question, one more decisive comparative prove was needed. One authoportrait of Tadeusz Popiel in the dress of chamberlain from 1907 solved the mystery because it is so much similar in many aspects to the portrait of the architect Teodor Talowski. The portrait was painted round 1903. It must have been hanging in the hall of the Polytechnic of Lwów. The portrait of Talowski was purchased by the Jagiellonian University Museum from Mrs Hamerlak-Mleczko in 1975.
 

The wall hanging which adorned the drawing room of the Estreichers – Professor Stanisław Estreicher, the Rector of the Jagiellonian University, and his wife Helena née Longchamps de Berier – was made at the famous textile manufacture of the Count Potocki family, operating in the years 1878–1939 in Buchach, Podoliya. It is one of the textiles which were manufactured in the workshops owned by Oskar Potocki, which on the turn of the 19th/20th century manufactured silk hangings, decorative textiles, fabrics for Polish national costumes (żupan) and Polish sashes.
The wall hanging (silk, metallic thread, jacquard technique) with motifs modelled after Italian Renaissance textiles (a rhomboid net created by flower springs with flower bush motifs inside the eyes of the net, and bordure with motifs of palmettes arranged alternately in rows) was made by a weaver from the Nagórzański family, in Count. Oskar Potocki’s workshop, between 1897 and 1904. The Jagiellonian University Museum at Collegium Maius has seven Buchach hangings, including one with the motif of Polish nobility sashes from Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s collection, also manufactured by Oskar Potocki’s workshop.
 

Kipp’s apparatus belongs to a group of very special laboratory glassware. Its appearance results from cooperation of two outstanding specialists: Jacobus Kipp and Johann H.W. Geissler. The apparatus serves for obtaining small amounts of strongly reactive gases, on site, at the laboratory. Its asset is the possibility of supervising the reaction. This successful model of apparatus was long used in laboratories, along with its numerous modifications.
It was created in 1860, but small numbers of the apparatus are still manufactured. In laboratory equipment it serves as a source of in situ nascendi gases. Currently it has been replaced by precision electronic apparatus.
 

The Natural History Museum of Biology and Earth Sciences Department in the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń was established on the 14th of November, 1973. From the beginning of its existence the Museum has been devoted to the educational programs and promotion of natural sciences, including environmental protection, among students, apprentices and other nature lovers. Research is also conducted in the Museum. Furthermore, the Museum organizes various popular science and cognitive events (photo exhibitions, aquaristic events, photo and film contests, and the like).
The exhibits in the display halls were collected from various sources, such as: donations, scientific expeditions by university researchers, purchase and taxidermy works carried out by museum staff. The largest exhibition hall houses a number of displays of animal classification and the Earth’s climate zones.

 

The Natural History Collections is a museum unit at the Faculty of Biology of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (UAM), created in 2004. It occupies the space in a separate wing of the Collegium Biologicum at the Morasko Campus. Among the main tasks of the Natural History Collections is gathering, protecting, making available and studying the exhibits as well as research and education activities. The collection originates from Faculties’ documentation (e.g. evidence gathered for diploma dissertations and publications) and other sources (donations of other institutions and individuals). The collection has been divided on the basis of their systematic position and method of keeping the exhibits: herbariums (e.g. a herbarium of tropical plants, moss, lichen and liverwort herbariums), invertebrate collections (e.g. malacological, acarological and entomological collections), vertebrates (e.g. ornithological – including oological, herpetological and mammal collections, paleontological and osteological collections (bone material from archaeological excavations). Part of the collection combines nature, history and culture (e.g. Arkady Fiedler’s entomological collection). An important part of the Natural History Collections’ activity is science promotion with the use of collected exhibits. One permanent exhibition, “The Exhibition of Tropical Plants” is on display. Numerous temporary exhibitions are also organised, usually associated with periodical science promotion events (e.g. the Scientists’ Night, the Biologists’ Night, the Poznań Festival of Science and Art). Extra-curriculum classes for school children are also organised (e.g. on biodiversity at the local and global levels) and specialist training courses (e.g. on entomology in judicial practice and on how to identify protected species).
 

The Natural History Museum, Department of Experimental Zoology and Evolutionary Bio-
logy, University of Łódź, is a continuator of the Municipal Natural History Museum in Łódź which was created in 1930. The present Museum collection contains over 100 000 specimens, encompassing many taxonomic groups of animals from all over the world. Insects are the most numerous, in particular butterflies, estimated at around 45 000, hymenoptera, around
25 000 and coleoptera, around 14 000. Among particularly valued and generally known exhibits there is a complete skeleton of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus), found in the Tatras and reconstructed by Edward Potęga, the aurochs’ skull (Bos primigenius), a spider crab preparation (Macrocheira kaempferi), as well as collections of Polish birds representing an almost complete array of species from Central Poland, Polish butterflies collected by Zygmunt Śliwiński and a collection of skeletons prepared by Izydor Siemieniuk. Many exhibits , both vertebrates and invertebrates, are of historical value and come from the early 20th-century collections.
 

In 2014, the Nature Education Centre of the Jagiellonian University (CEP) begins its operation. It is a completely new unit, which will house the Zoological Museum, the Geological Museum as well as the University’s anthropological and paleobotanical collections. The construction of CEP is financed largely from EU funds. The two-storey building of CEP has an area of 4700m2. The ground floor houses the hall, part of the geological and astronomical exhibitions, the history cabinet and modern storage space for the geological collections and one of Europe’s largest scientific collections of tropical butterflies, along with staff rooms, laboratories and a lecture hall. The Hall will also contain an aviary in which live insects and other invertebrates will be on display. The first floor will house main zoological and geological exhibitions under the leading theme “Evolution of Life and Earth” and a temporary exhibition room. The main part of the zoological exhibition will be a review of systematics of the animal world and thematic blocks devoted to biogeography, mechanisms of evolution, adaptation to life in various environments, etology and a large anthropology block. The geological part will contain a review of geological eras and a number of thematic exhibitions. CEP will conduct activities connected with education at all levels, including thematic activities on various nature-related themes, science promotion workshops and the knowledge of nature. Campaigns promoting the values of nature and raising environmental awareness of the general public will be organised. CEP is intended to be a modern unit participating in teaching curricula of the Jagiellonian University and schools from Małopolska and all over the country.

Abstract. The Władysław Rydzewski Museum of Natural History, University of Wrocław (MNHW) is among the oldest museums of its kind in Poland and the largest such museum being part of university in our country. It was established in 1814 as the University’s Zoological Museum on the initiative of J.L.C. Gravenhorst, the first zoology professor in Wrocław. 2014 is the Museum’s 200. anniversary. During almost half of its history it was located in the halls of the University’s Main Building. Since 1904, it occupied its present location at 21 Sien-
kiewicza street, and additionally, since 2004 it acquired a new Herbarium building where also the entomological collections were transferred. The Museum’s biological collections, which were among the richest in Europe, suffered greatly during World War II; in all, half of the zoological collections and nearly two thirds of the herbarium were lost. Despite the losses, the collection is the second largest in Poland. After the war, under the Polish government, the Museum remained part of the University and its significance increased. In 1974 it became the present-day Museum of Natural History, of a rank of research institute. Two years later, having fused with the Herbarium and the former Botanical Museum, and having taken over the old and valuable plant collections, the Museum acquired its present structure and status. The main spiritus movens of the organisation changes and post-war scientific development was the Museum’s director of 1963–1980, professor W. Rydzewski. In recognition of his merits, since 1985 the Museum bears his name.
 

Born in Bologna, educated at Bologna and Padua universities, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), is generally known as a naturalist and biologist, the author a great work: Natural History, in which he aimed to contain his entire knowledge of nature. Aldrovandi was a man of very receptive mind, thoroughly educated and thus he was appointed to various offices throughout his life. He was the Head of the Chair of Natural Sciences at the Bologna University. He contributed to the opening of the municipal botanical garden of which he was the director for many years. While holding the office of Protomedicus, he compiled the first Bologna’s pharmacopoeia which is still binding in the city. He spent most of his free time and funds on travelling and collecting materials for his Natural History. His steadily growing collection of books, manuscripts, drawings and natural exhibits was displayed in his own house and was available to visitors. In his last will, Aldrovandi bequeathed his natural collection and library to the Senate of Bologna which transferred the collection to the Municipal Palace. The surviving exhibits and prints are now kept at the Palazzo Poggi and the University Library in Bologna.
 

The article is a continuation of the subject connected with the work of Ulissess Aldrovandi focusing on Polish scholars’ contribution to enrich his collection. Some specimens and prints he could not find personally, he received thanks to his friendship and correspondence with fellow scientists, former students and travellers interested in his work and in visiting his museum. Thanks to his Polish contacts, Aldrovandi could also extend his collection by specimens from Poland. The Professor of the Kraków Academy, Marcin Fox, who met the naturalist during his studies in Bologna, was particularly instrumental in acquiring exhibits.
The exchange of letters and nature exhibits between the scientists continued from 1579 to 1588.
 

The article presents the history of the collection created by the Dzieduszycki family in Lviv. The collection contains various ethnographic, numismatic and library exhibits, but first and foremost natural exhibits. In the 19th century Count Włodzimierz Dzieduszycki set up the Natural and Ethnographic Museum in Lviv, based on his collection.
The paper also contains a description of the museum building and the history of the collection during the 1st and the 2nd World Wars, and in the aftermath of the take over of the museum by the USSR authorities after the shifting of borders in 1945.
The activities of people professionally involved in the operation of the Natural Museum in Lviv and their scientific relations are also briefly covered.
After 1945 the collection was dispersed – some exhibits are to be found in other museums, while other exhibits are still in their former building. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to access them.