The Sky for June 2025

Spring has finally arrived on the prairies! Trees are leafing out, flowers are in bloom, days are getting hotter, and, of course, the insects are back! They’re flying, swimming, and crawling around, playing important ecosystem roles that make the world go ‘round. While you can always come to the Museum to see the insect specimens that we have on display in the Museum Galleries, nothing beats the real live thing. But what’s the best way to get a good look? Take it from your Collections Technician for Natural History, if you want to see some cool insects, nothing beats night lighting.

The words “Night lighting” on appear on data labels for specimens throughout our entomological collection, but what does it mean? “Night lighting” is the use of light sources at night to attract insects for observation, photography, or collection. When a specimen has “Night lighting” on the label, it means that the collector set up a night light to catch the specimen. While serious entomologists use expensive rigs involving power generators and mercury vapour lamps, low-cost setups can be put together easily, with supplies you likely already own or can get at a hardware store. Once you’ve got your kit together, you can set it up in your yard, at a city park, or even take it camping!

Here’s what you need to get started:

• A white sheet, the bigger the better
• A regular flashlight, the brighter the better
• An ultraviolet flashlight (AKA blacklight), the broader the UV spectrum the better

Now, I know some readers are probably thinking “Why would I want to attract insects? Will they bite? Is this safe?”, and to that I would say: Using a night light to attract insects is a really excellent way to get up close and observe some of Nature’s coolest critters, even for those who are skittish around insects. Once the insects are on the sheet, they tend to stay on the sheet, and if they do take off, they’ll be much more interested in getting back to the sheet than investigating you! Since the insects are so preoccupied with getting to and staying on the sheet, it makes for a controlled way to introduce young ones to insects and teach them about the creatures they find. Here are some common insects to find at light traps in the city:

Gather your supplies and give night lighting a try this summer! Happy bug hunting!

One prevailing comment I hear about my job, whether in person or via social media, is “your job sounds so cool!” And you know what? It is. But I’m about to reveal the dark underbelly of my job, the bane of my existence, the thing that frustrates me to my core: dirty data.

Last year, the Museum implemented a new Collections Management System (CMS) after years with an old database that was vintage in all the wrong ways. The worst part of our old database was the inability to control the data being entered into the system, resulting in dirty data in desperate need of attention.

Dirty data is incorrect data, misspellings, outdated or inaccurate information found in various fields in our database.

One cause of dirty data is information changing over time, like the reclamation of First Nations place names or changes to the nomenclature we use to categorize objects, leading to inaccuracies in our existing data. However, the biggest culprit of dirty data in our system is human error. With hundreds of individuals creating or entering data into dozens of fields over a fifty-year period, mistakes are bound to happen. This ranges from simple spelling errors to lazy cataloguing resulting in variations in what should be one accurate piece of data.

Dirty data is bad for a handful of reasons. One, the most detrimental to the function of the CMS, is reduced data quality – these errors mean that impacted objects are overlooked in searches of the system.

We are currently in this phase of our new CMS implementation. I’m exporting data, reviewing it, making necessary changes, and then importing the cleansed data back into the database.

Our new collections management system has some key features that helps us prevent the entry of dirty data:

1. We now have many lexicon-controlled fields, meaning that you need to pull data from a pre-approved list of available terms. No more Object Name=Tunbler because you’ll only be able to enter Object Name=Tumbler, for instance. We can update the lexicon terms available for those fields as needed, which is helpful.
2. Our long text fields, like description or provenance, now have spellcheck! This is great for cataloguers who struggle with spelling. We’re living in 2025, folks!

Further to this, additional training and support for the creators of data is also a top priority moving forward. Will some dirty data still sneak in now and then? Absolutely. But then I’ll be there to scrub it clean.