FBA Archives and Collections

The FBA archives and collections contain a number of collections of specimens, museum pieces, historic data and archives covering many of the most prominent freshwater scientists and the development of freshwater science. Currently the collections comprise 16 four-drawer filing cabinets, four plan chests, 650 standard size archive boxes, 300 slightly smaller correspondence boxes and 20 meters of reference samples on shelving.

Archives

Thanks to generous donations of well-known researchers such as Winifred Frost, Penelope Jenkin, T.T. Macan, W.H. Pearsall and Colin Reynolds, the Archives contain a large number of field notebooks, unpublished data, correspondence, drawings, photographs, and maps. The Archives also house the corporate archive of the FBA. The full list of the FBA Archives collections can be found HERE.

The details of 26 FBA archives collections can be found on Archives Hub

1913 map of the shore of Windermere with detailed annotations by H.P. Moon, 1950s

Specimens

In conjunction with datasets, field notebooks and research papers, the FBA holds a significant collection of natural history specimens, many of which go back to the early days of the FBA in the late 1930s. The specimens include

• An extensive collection of phytoplankton and zooplankton;
• An extensive collection of fish scales, kept on slides and in envelopes;
• Water samples, including samples from the 1937 Percy Sladen Trust fund expedition to Lake Titicaca;
• Wet and pinned invertebrates, listed in Elliott and McCloskey, A Catalogue for the FBA Collection of Freshwater Macroinvertebrates (2001), as well as invertebrate slides;
• A herbarium, comprising 731 vascular plants, as well as seeds and bryophytes.

1937 Water samples from Lake Titicaca

The West Collection of Algal Samples