Event Details

Keith Moore (Head of Collections, the Royal Society) introduces the Royal Society and its Collections, and new research with Lancaster University exploring the Royal Society’s 19th century Burlington House exhibitions.

Keith Moore has been the Royal Society’s Head of Collections since 2005, overseeing the preservation, use and outreach associated with one of the finest history of science collections in the world. His previous curatorial experience was been with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Wellcome Institute. Keith started his career in literary libraries in the north-west: he worked for the Wordsworth Trust at Dove Cottage in Grasmere and the Armitt Library, Ambleside.

Keith will be talking about the Royal Society and its historical collections, including current and future digital access projects to aid scholarship. He will review the organisation’s long, and sometimes reluctant efforts to present science to wider audiences, of which online versions of historical material are one of the latest incarnations. The Society’s current project, with Lancaster University, on the meaning and impact of the Royal Society’s 19th century Burlington House exhibitions (‘conversations’) is beginning to subject this strand of Royal Society audience activity to more systematic scrutiny.

Image: Sir William Crookes inspects ‘Burlington House curios’, DailyGraphic, 24 June 1905.