ABSTRACT Mississippi State University’s Dunn-Seiler Museum is a small, traditional museum housed in the Department of Geosciences. Founded in 1946, the museum preserves the geologic specimens collected by faculty, students, and donors and includes holotypes and extensive Cretaceous collections. Throughout its seven decades, the Dunn-Seiler Museum has transitioned in its role as a repository and displayer of geological objects to a facility that uses best practices in informal education to promote visitor understanding of important geological concepts, including biodiversity, evolution, geologic time, and sustainability. The first small public gallery had limited access and displayed specimens with identification cards but little interpretive signage. Beginning in the early 2000s, best research practices were utilized to build interpretive displays to enhance the visitor’s educational experience. In the past decade, the Dunn-Seiler participated within national organizations to expand educational opportunities with resources at the national level. Throughout this transition to increased public education, the museum still curated and maintained research collections. Today the Dunn-Seiler Museum bridges the community of researchers and the general public. While the museum’s role at the forefront of geology was initially in its storage and display of research specimens, its role has expanded to communicate geology for improved public geoliteracy.

ABSTRACT In 2017–2018, two fine arts undergraduate students, Todd Rowan and Moesha Wright, conceived and created a mural for the Dunn-Seiler Museum at Mississippi State University, Mississippi, USA, under the supervision of art professor emeritus Brent Funderburk. Students researched, conceptualized, and painted Mississippi Cretaceous Panorama , which interpreted the Late Cretaceous landscape that once surrounded the university and the momentous extinction event that brought the Mesozoic Era to its close. The project necessitated creativity to address several challenges, including funding, space constraints, and a local population with Young Earth views. The completed mural engages museum visitors with a mosasaur, ceratopsian dinosaur, and a meteorite impact—illustrating the local, terminal Mesozoic geologic history in a nonthreatening venue that can improve community geoliteracy.

ABSTRACT Postage stamps are small works of art seen by people worldwide that can be used effectively in education. The first paleontological stamp was released by India in 1951. Since then, over 4000 stamps with fossils, paleontologists, museums, and collecting sites have been issued by almost 200 countries. Stamps that illustrate fossils or reconstructions are intrinsically interesting and popular with many of the millions of stamp collectors. All disciplines of paleontology are represented, but dinosaurs are by far the most common subject, although even bacteria appear on a few stamps. Most of the stamps were scientifically accurate at the time they were issued though some artists took artistic liberties to fashion unique stamps. Overall, the stamps are artistic and educational because their small sizes and low cost make them easily accessible for classroom activities, exhibits, and presentations. They cover topics such as biodiversity, geology, ecology, oceanography, and evolution, among others. Paleophilately has provided art, education, joy, and happiness to people worldwide.

ABSTRACT Natural history museums’ (NHMs) primary missions are to collect, curate, and research natural history objects (life, earth, human cultures, and other specimens), and to use them for public education and outreach. The museums have the potential to enhance lifelong science literacy in unique, direct ways based on the collections they house. Ever since 1683, NHMs have exhibited specimens and educated visitors. Now, thousands of NHMs operate across the globe in ~100 countries, but no two of them are alike. Each resembles the others in the primary missions but differs significantly in collection size and diversity, research efforts, staff size and tasks, styles, public displays, outreach, and education. NHMs are thus complicated businesses due to the wide variety of tasks, objectives, and audiences. Collections are the heart of a NHM, for everything depends on them. These collections are all biased for a number of reasons, but none of them could contain an example of every kind of natural history object. The big museums have the oldest and largest collections, while smaller NHMs have mostly local collections. Collections are further biased because only a small part of any of them can be exhibited; hence, specimens with certain attractive characteristics are selected for display and use in education and outreach. Many NHMs use replicas of specimens in occasional displays for a variety of reasons to enhance the visitor experience, chiefly to bring rare or fragile specimens to them. This is all normal and to be expected. The overall outreach aim of NHMs should be to encourage and provide lifelong learning for everyone. People who attend NHMs are mostly educated, and, in Europe and America, chiefly white and middle to upper class. Ethnic or economically disadvantaged groups commonly find NHMs unwelcoming, alienating, and largely irrelevant to their own lives; hence, they make up only a small portion of attendees. In addition, people with physical and mental limitations of mobility, size, sight, hearing, and understanding must be accommodated in NHMs. Museums need to engage these people and to develop programs and exhibits that they will find attractive because these populations will increase in the future. Exciting, stimulating, and engaging exhibits built around the collections of the NHMs can welcome all groups, if the culture and experiences of these people are understood. Sight, touch, sound, and smell are part of a more realistic exhibit and can reinforce the attractiveness of an exhibit. Real objects from the collections, displayed with imagination and creativity focused on the entire population served by the museum, can captivate and welcome people back again and encourage new visitors to attend. Technology should be adopted to complement, not replace, exhibits of actual specimens from the NHM. Perhaps the most important computer technology will be artificial intelligence (AI). This bodes well for the future in planning, organizing, and integrating all aspects of the complicated functioning of a NHM.