Mineralogy collections

Management and curation

The collections in the Mineralogy Department are made up of well over a third of a million individual specimens and are assembled into four broad groups of materials: minerals, rocks, meteorites and ores. Each of the four groups is handled curatorially in a slightly different way.

Aquamarine is the blue variety of beryl (beryllium aluminum silicate)

Mineral CollectionThe systematic mineral collection (about 180,000 specimens) is organised on a crystal-chemical basis, with individual species then being sorted geographically - this collection includes about 5,000 gemstones.
Rock collections The rock collections of about 120,000 rock specimens, including building stones, is organised chronologically following the date of the specimenís acquisition.
The Meteorite Collection Around 5,000 specimens are organised according to the classification of the meteorite.
Ore collectionsThere are about 30,000 ore specimens come from a wide range of mineral deposits.
Ocean Bottom Deposit Collection Around 40,000 specimens are arranged geographically and can be indexed from the latitude and longitude co-ordinates
Gemstone Collection

In addition to the collections listed above, there is a substantial collection of unregistered mineral duplicates and several teaching and smaller collections.

There are two major mineral collections which are kept as distinct entities - the Russell collection of British minerals (12,000 specimens) and the Ashcroft Swiss collection (7,000 specimens). Under the terms of the Russell bequest and the Ashcroft donation these highly individual collections will be kept in perpetuity in their present state. Part of the Kingsbury collection of British minerals has been incorporated in the systematic collection and the remaining and substantial part is currently being assessed.

Geographical range

The systematic mineral collection is renowned for the breadth of its world-wide coverage although its particular strengths lie in British and European classical material and in specimens from the Commonwealth countries. The petrology collections more closely parallel the research work undertaken in the department and in recent times have shown a specialisation in igneous rocks, especially carbonatites and alkaline rocks. There is a fine collection of kimberlites and upper mantle xenoliths. Meteorites are represented by falls and finds world-wide, but recent work has been focused on the Antarctic micrometeorites. The ocean bottom deposits collection is particularly well represented in material from the Challenger voyage of discovery and in material provided by the Admiralty.

Historical range

There are nearly 200 specimens in the systematic mineral collection which came from the original Sloane collection (1753), including two trays of 'medicinal' material. Specimens from other early collections - Hatchett (1799), Cracherode (1799), Greville (1810), von Born (1810), etc - are dispersed in the systematic collection. Much more recently, the mineral and economic collections have been greatly enhanced by the incorporation of the substantial collections of the British Geological Survey (1985), which includes much material from the former British colonies.

Current priority area for collecting

The current research projects in the department are generating much material through fieldwork for eventual incorporation in the ore and petrology collections. Fewer specimens for the mineral collection are acquired in this way; most important acquisitions have to be organised by purchase from mineral dealers. Specimen exchanges are now far less prominent because of the difficulty in defining a duplicate mineral specimen. The Museum has benefited greatly from a number of donations and loans of fine display-quality material in recent years.

Some of the more important areas for targeted acquisitions are as follows:

newly-described mineral species or species unrepresented in the collection
described or type mineral specimens
mineral specimens from the British Isles
mineral specimens required for the Minerals Systematics Research Programme
rare-earth mineral species
carbonatites and alkaline rocks
new falls and finds of meteorites and unrepresented or poorly represented classes of meteorite
micrometeorites

Collection statistics

Estimates of the numbers of specimens in the departmental collections become more accurate as the work on preparing the collection databases proceeds. In the mineral sciences, type specimens are only recognised for mineral species, of these only two classifications, holotypes and cotypes, are internationally approved.

There are no equivalent designations in petrology. Most specimens are in the form of hand specimens, but there are also many large, exhibition-size specimens and a large number of micromounts and polished and thin sections. Much of the oceanic material is in the form of bottled sediments but there are, in addition, many cores.

Collection	Specimens	Species	Types
Minerals	180,000	2,400	420
Rocks	100,000	-	-
Building stones	20,000	-	-
Ores	30,000	-	-
Ocean bottom deposits	40,000	-	-
Meteorites	3,000	2,000*	-
Total	373,000	4,400	420

*Number of meteorites represented in the collection. Some large meteorites are represented by more than one individual specimen.

Location and storage

The systematic mineral collection is now divided over two storage areas, the Waterhouse Building Mineral Gallery (102) and the storage gallery 3G above the Earth Galleries. About one tenth of the mineral collection is on public display. The rock collection is in the south-east basement corridor, with overspills into some of the cabinets in adjacent offices. Meteorites are stored in a secure room in the same basement. The ocean bottom deposits are now at the Wandsworth store.

Acquisitions and disposals

In the last year for which statistics are available (1996-7) there were 1,614 specimen acquisitions to the departmental collections: 1,277 minerals, 33 rocks, 6 meteorites and 300 ocean bottom deposits. These numbers vary greatly from year to year and can be significantly boosted when entire collections are received. Disposal of registered specimens by exchange with other institutions is now a rare event - it is more usual to donate a small portion of a specimen when research material is requested, thereby retaining the main portion of the specimen in the collections. Some disposals through deterioration occur on a small scale - the Trustees are informed when this occurs. Unregistered material is frequently discarded if it is undocumented or of trivial importance.

Loans and outgoing donations for research purposes

In 1996-7 there were 74 loans or donations of material from the departmental collections involving a total of 239 individual specimens. Although the latter number is relatively small, these involved the loan of a number of valuable minerals and gemstones for commercial purposes.