Palaeobotany in Museums

Abstract

Museums, whether national or local, have a variety of roles and thus have diverse and sometimes conflicting pressure put on their resources. For many local museums, the provision of public displays is their most important role (Waterston 1979), since either directly or indirectly (e.g. the spin-offs of tourism) this is for the immediate benefit of their main paymaster, the ratepayer. As was cogently argued by Waterston, however, they can have another important role, which is to store specimens for academic research (see also Bassett 1979). Such material may have a national or even international importance and may thus have a greater long-term significance than the public displays.