| What is Geology? | |||
| Geology can be defined as the study of the origin, composition, history, structure, and processes of the Earth. | |||
| Geology is all around us, not just beneath our feet but in buildings, roads and most types of manufactured product. Geology affects almost every aspect of our lives, from where we live to the fossil fuels we use to run our cars, heat our homes, or generate power. The very shape of the landscape is determined by geological processes. | |||
| The geology of Northern Ireland is more varied than any other similarly sized region of Great Britain and Ireland. Its bedrock geology includes examples from almost every period of geological time during the last billion years of Earth history. The whole area is blanketed with relics of the last Ice Age (left behind when the glaciers finally retreated just a few thousand years ago) which continue to control the present-day patterns of drainage, human settlement and agriculture. | |||
| Overview of the Department of Geology | |||
| The Department's mission is to stimulate interest in and enthusiasm for geology and its heritage, using high quality museum collections. Staff aim to provide a first-rate geological service to Northern Ireland residents and visitors, and to undertake research into collections-based aspects of the subject. | |||
| The 'bedrock' of the Ulster Museum's geology service is its collections of fossils, minerals and rocks, from Northern Ireland and beyond, numbering nearly a quarter-million specimens. These collections were given by or bought from generations of enthusiasts for Geology - amateur, professional, academic alike - over the last 200 years. There are also have important collections of geological books, journals, maps, photographs, archives, prints and drawings. | |||
| The Ulster Museum holds the only major Geology collection resource in Northern Ireland that is accessible to the public. Focussing public attention on the collections' value for enjoyment, education and study is vital if their full potential is to be realised. | |||
| The collections are held in trust for public benefit, and it is the job of Geology Department staff not only to make these collections accessible to visitors today, but also to ensure that they survive for the enjoyment and education of future generations. The staff consist of: | |||
| Peter R. Crowther MA PhD AMA - Keeper of Geology Became Keeper in 1995, after twenty years working for museums in Cambridge, Peterborough, Leicester and Bristol. Head of Department. | |||
| Michael Simms BSc PhD - Curator of Palaeontology Completed a PhD on fossil crinoids (sea-lilies) and undertook post-doctoral research in Liverpool, Nottingham, Dublin and Bristol. After exhibition work for the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, became lecturer in Geology at Cheltenhan & Gloucester College of Higher Education. Has been Curator of Palaeontology since 1996. | |||
| Kenneth James BSc - Curator (Geology) Graduated in Geology from Queen's University of Belfast and joined the Ulster Museum in 1973 as a Museum Assistant. | |||
| Regular volunteers - George Johnston, Dr Jack Preston, John Hanna, Darren Twamley. In addition, each year a number of school students help out during their 'work experience' week. | |||
| Work of the Department | |||
| Apart from responsibility for the public displays ('front-of-house') and the study collections ('behind-the-scenes'), staff are involved in a wide range of activities geared to promoting the use of the Geology collections. They deal annually with hundreds of telephone and written enquires, provide a specimen identification service 'on demand', arrange loans of material to other institutions, and guide students, teachers, researchers and collectors in their use of the study collections. They also become involved in education programmes, fossil 'digs', site recording around the province, writing articles for the popular and specialist press, giving radio and television interviews, lecturing to local groups and societies, and so on - the list is a long one. | |||
| Much of what staff do is aimed at improving public access, both physically and intellectually, to the collections. But staff must also ensure that the collections are cared for to the highest modern standards (quality display and storage environments, comprehensive and efficient systems for the storage and retrieval of information about the collections, appropriate support facilities such as remedial conservation and library resources), thereby ensuring that they survive for the use and enjoyment of future generations. This part of the job is often called Collections Management, and is partly the responsibility of the Ulster Museum's Conservation Department (Natural Sciences Conservator: Jill Kerr). | |||
| Clearly there will be tensions between these twin goals of improving public access and collections management, since public access inevitably increases the risk of damage and loss. It is left to the staff's professional judgement just how to strike an appropriate balance between access and long-term care. | |||
| Of particular importance in a national museum such as the Ulster Museum is the involvement of curators in original research. Staff are expected to carry out original investigations related either to the collections or to their particular subject specialism, and to publish the results. In the Department of Geology, our research policy gives priority to subjects as diverse as the history of the science (especially involving specimens or personalities linked with the Museum), studies geared to future exhibitions, and topics which extend our primary knowledge about the fossils, minerals and rocks of Northern Ireland. | |||
| The Geology Collections | |||
| The Geology collections today consist of approximately 200,000 fossils, 30,000 minerals, 15,000 rocks and over 700 metres of drill core. Major strengths are fossils from the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks which fringe the Antrim Plateau, fossils from the Carboniferous Limestone of Ireland, and Ice Age faunas. There are important historical and heritage collections, such as Geological Survey of Ireland material collected in the nineteenth century. The mineral collections are particularly strong in garnets (over 1,000 examples), silica minerals (1,500 specimens), zeolites (800 specimens, mostly from the volcanic rocks of north-east Ulster), and carbonate minerals (400 specimens). There is an outstanding gem collection of around 1,000 items, and a small but growing collection of meteorites. Most recently, a large collection of rocks, minerals and fossils was transferred from Queen's University Belfast, following the closure of the university's Geology Department in 2001. | |||
| The collections of geological specimens are supported by a library of early and rare books (with emphasis on Irish geology, local economic geology and biography), geological maps, more than 4,000 offprints of research papers, and about 20,000 transparencies. The collections have been databased and can be searched electronically by staff and visitors. Eventually this facility should be available on the internet. | |||
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