Stock Centres and the Curation of Living Drosophila Collections

• In Event: How Collections End: Objects, Meaning and Loss in Laboratories and Museums - II

Abstract

Biological stock centres collect, care for and distribute living organisms for scientific research. Yeasts, bacteria, viruses, plasmids, cell cultures, animals and plants are kept in stock centres around the world, and the composition of these collections both determine and are shaped by the methods and course of biology. How are these collections built up? Who cares for them? How to they remain valuable and accessible to their biologist users? This paper explores the practices of permanent curation, care and funding required to maintain living scientific collections, by analysing the closure, or threatened closure, of several Drosophila stock centres in the 1990s, as well the successes of a stock centre that thrives today. It details the practices of perpetual care required for stock cultivation. It describes the negotiated culling, deaccessioning and death that maintain a living collection’s continued relevance to its users. It outlines the continual work of cataloguing and documentation required to sustain its meaning, value and availability.

Author

• Jenny Bangham, University of Cambridge