The Sir Joseph Banks Society aims to inform and educate providing interesting and accessible scientific collections, archives and resources.
We are in the process of transitioning the Joseph Banks Society from its original inception as a history society to a modern natural science based museum and education centre. We feel this approach better reflects the life and work of Sir Joseph Banks.
To support this aim, a core objective of the society is the acquisition and cataloguing of natural science collections. Whilst it may seem that by limiting our collections to specimens similar to those collected by Sir Joseph we are restricting our options, in fact his choice of collections was so eclectic that effectively, almost anything goes!
As a volunteer based society, cataloguing can be slow (and we warmly welcome new volunteers, see more on the Volunteer tab on the Main Menu at the top of this page), however there is evidence of forward motion as can be seen from the list of collections on the Collections tab . The collections listed there represent a subset of the collections that we have acquired; we don’t list on the website until we have made some progress towards cataloguing a collection.
In addition to the collections shown on the Collections tab we also have
- A large collection of specimens including artwork, taxidermy, archive material et al from George Edward Lodge, a well-known Lincolnshire artist
- Several collections of insects from various sources, mostly from the Lincolnshire Naturalists Union.
- Another large collection of butterflies from Mr. P? Small.
- A complete series of bat records focused primarily on South Lincolnshire.
- Various archive records dating from the 17th Century onwards.
- A large reference library focussed around the life and work of Sir Joseph Banks
We are aware that proper care and conservation calls for equipment and resources over and above four walls and a ceiling so we have invested in a number of facilities including
- A temperature and humidity controlled Herbarium
- Ultraviolet screening film in the Art Gallery
- An embryonic Building Management System
- An industrial freezer operating at 238°K / -35°C
- Conservation grade HEPA vacuum cleaner
We are also fortunate to be able to call on external bodies for advice and support including professional staff from the Natural History Museum, Lincoln Conservation (part of the University of Lincoln), the Lincolnshire Naturalists’ Union and others.
As an organisation we also wish to ensure that access to our collections is available globally, this can be seen in action both by the publishing of collection data on this website and also by our investment in photographic imaging tools such as 3D imagers, 3D printers and other computing resources.
Like many organisations in the cultural sector we are constrained by space and consequently can only display a small part of our collections. Additionally, some specimens require a controlled environment (specific levels of temperature, humidity and light) that is not possible to achieve in the ‘Front of House’ areas open to the public