Visit to Animals Inside Out

The Natural History Museum has a new exhibition by the well known German anatomists Gunter von Hagen called Animals Inside Out. We went along yesterday to have a look at their examples of plastination and skeletal structures. The exhibition starts out with a number of stunning presentations of octopuses and sharks like the figurehead (not hammer head!) shark below. With special lighting this really is a stunning exhibit - worth visiting if just for this.

Image Link : http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/images/1007/shark-slide_109325_1.jpg   

There are also a range of plastinated domestic species demonstrating structure such as the horses lower foot, cervical vertebra. As vets we were pretty sure that the positioning of the cervical vertebra was rather un natural and there seemed to be evidence of some quite severe spondylosis too. One interesting information panel described the only anatomical difference between a sheep and a goat - have a guess (answers on an email to wikimaster@wikivet.net). The real star piece in this section was the charging bull below - though it looked rather "plastic" to me!

Image Link : http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources-rx/images/1007/bull-gallery-slide_109426_1.jpg 

Finally, the last room had some of the larger specimens including the giraffe and the famous elephant. These must have taken years to make and were particularly impressive because muscles had been teased apart to demonstrate vascular supplies and innervation. I had hope to see a few more display items (the skeletons were nothing special) and a few of the horse structures that von Hagens is so famous for - but still well worth the visit.

Image authorised for use by http://www.bodyworlds.com 

OVAM Weekend Workshop

Last weekend we held the OVAM Weekend Workshop for all of the e-Curators from partner vetschools in the project. Overall, eleven curators attended from Edinburgh, Liverpool, Nottingham, Cambridge, Bristol, RVC, Dublin, Murcia, Utrecht and Bern making it a truly international weekend. We were delighted to have students from so many places.

Everybody arrived in London on Friday evening and had a relaxed evening to get to know each other a bit. The aim of the workshop was to act as a type of forum for discussion as well as the presentation of some concepts and ideas which the curators will need to consider for in their work. On Saturday and Sunday we covered a vast range of aspects about the museum, including the background to the project and how it will fit into WikiVet, the practicalities of different design ideas and how resources will be selected, as well as people's own experience of anatomy at their respective schools. We also had a look at an example of Asset Bank which we think will be the most appropriate platform to act as the 'stack' for storage of all the digital resources which will make up the museum. Licensing issues cropped up again, ensuring that all material is correctly licensed and released with all the necessary information is going to be paramount to the success of the project. The curators helped us brainstorm possible designs and navigation routes for the museum interface, ideas such as having a 'Google' type search box, favorites pages for academics to highlight resources they feel are particularly useful and drop down menus acting as filters were all useful suggestions.

Overall we hope that the weekend was useful and enjoyable for all the students that attended and provided a good opportunity for them to meet with their peers and clarify what will be required of them in their work over the following months. We are very grateful to have such enthusiastic students, who have already contributed lots of great ideas to the project, helping to ensure that this collaboration will result in a very exciting resource indeed!