AUTOMATIC AIDS IN ZOOLOGY MUSEUM

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31159, 8 September 1966, Page 20

AUTOMATIC AIDS IN ZOOLOGY MUSEUM

To give the zoology department of the University of Canterbury the best possible teaching museum would cost a lot of money, but it would pay handsomely, said Dr. B. Stonehouse, reader in zoology, in an interview. He has been overseas for two months seeking ideas on this project. Such a teaching museum required the liveliest displays, modern materials, use of new plastic techniques, careful labelling, and such visual aids as “film loops” (sound films in colour which played for four minutes at the press of a button), automatic filmstrip, film, and slide projectors worked similarly, and tape-recorded commentaries, all of which were built into displays of zoological material. In this way, Dr. Stonehouse said, impact was made on all the student’s senses while he had actual specimens before him.

This method greatly relieved the pressure on formal lectures.

“A museum of this kind is not so much a place as a method of teaching, even a way of life,” said Dr. Stonehouse. “The concept is not just to show things, but to put across ideas.” Striking examples of the success of these techniques were examined by Dr. Stonehouse in London, Oxford, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Vancouver, and Honolulu. While overseas. Dr. Stonehouse attended the International Ornithological Congress in Oxford, where he gave a

paper on the varying size and shape of penguins. In Europe and the Far East, as well as in Britain and North America, he had research discussions in his special field of marine birds and mammals.