Gustavianum Historical Collections

The historical collections at Gustavianum are an important part of the university’s cultural heritage. Gustavianum is responsible for making these collections accessible for students and reserachers at university level, as well as displaying them in exhibitions open to the general public. Gustavianum’s collections are a resource for teaching, research and collaboration at Uppsala University. We aim to make them available for teaching and research as much as possible, but we also need to balance this against our responsibility to preserve the collections for the future.

Research on human remains must follow our special regulations, which comply with the general guidelines that Uppsala University has developed as well as the guidelines recommended by the International Council of Museums, ICOM.

To make your visit to our archives as fruitful as possible, we would also request that you send us a rough list of what materials you are interested in working with. Objects that are on display in our museum, on loan to other institutions or under conservation treatment are not available for study or research purposes.

All work on the collections must take place in the assigned areas. Our staff are responsible for retriving objects from the storerooms and returned again. Researchers and students should aim to keep the existing order in the boxes, and any markings must not be removed, added to or replaced.

If you plan to do a longer study using our collections we would like you to alert us well in advance. We will need a brief plan of your research project, an estimate of time needed and what you would like us to help you with. You can normally reserve a study space for a month with us. We can make exceptions for those who have travelled far to work in our archives and for researchers with larger grants covering several years and a multitude of objects.

Within five years of your concluded project we would like to have a preliminary report to keep for our own documentation. After a further five years we reserve the right to use any unpublished results unless we have come to a special agreement beforehand. This policy stems from our wish to have our collections used actively and published for a wider audience.

Internships
Are you a student at Uppsala University and would like to do an internship with us?
Gustavianum welcomes interns who are interested in working with our collections. We have large collections of classical, Nordic and Egyptian archaeological material, science history, art and coins. If you are interested in doing an internship with us, please talk to your own department.

Research projects
We only process applications for using our collections from graduate students and researchers who are affiliated with a university department and have a research grant or other research-related funding for their work (such as a post for doctoral studies). Graduate students can have access to a specified collection for up to five years. Researchers can apply for access one year at a time. Each yearly renewal is contingent upon a preliminary report on work done so far. These reports will not be included in our open access system until the research project is concluded and published or until five years have passed since completion. If several projects need access to the same material, Gustavianum will make an assessment on use and access, in dialogue with all researchers involved.

Sampling
Sampling from our collections needs a special permit.

Loans from our collections
We primarily lend items from our collections to other museums. Only rarely will we lend material to individual researchers.

Contact
Gustavianum, Historiska Samlingar
Evolutionsbiologiskt Centrum (EBC)
Kåbovägen 4A
752 36 Uppsala

e-mail: Historiccollections@gustavianum.uu.se
Phone: (+46) 18 471 21 00

Our collections are a great resource for teaching and research – welcome to use them!