Putting museum mineral collections to work: 45 years of practical experience

My earliest memories of interacting with curators of mineralogy go back to the days of Peter Embrey, Bob Symes, John Fuller and Peter Tandy at the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London; Alec Livingstone, Brian Jackson, Peter Davidson and Bob Reekie at National Museums Scotland (NMS) in Edinburgh; Brian Atkins and Monica Price at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH)); Richard Bevins and Peter Williams in Cardiff; Roger Penhallurick in Truro and more. Looking back over the intervening decades it is humbling to have known and to have had the privilege of working with such towering figures in the world of mineralogy. At the first Mineralogy and Museums Conference in London (1988), Bob Symes wanted someone from the collector community to give a talk and I was duly nominated! That experience was a little nerve-wracking for a young amateur mineralogist, but it provided a wonderful opportunity to meet and rub shoulders with an incredible range of international scientists and curators, many of whom I have been able to keep in touch with and to contact about research projects when the need arose. From my earliest forays following up literature references, or seeking information on specific localities, I have invariably enjoyed the most enthusiastic and helpful responses from curatorial staff in museums. This short paper shines a light on some of these interactions and reviews the outputs from such collaborations, including conference posters, journal papers and three self-published books.