[Proceedings of the VII international symposium 'Cultural heritage in geosciences, mining and metallurgy : libraries, archives, museums' : "Museums and their collections" held at the Nationaal Natuurhistorisch Museum Leiden (The Netherlands), 19-23 May, 2003 / Cor F. Winkler Prins and Stephen K. Donovan (editors)]: The Kinker diatom collection: discovery - exploration - exploitation

Johannes Kinker (1823-1900) was a typical representative of the Victorian 'amateur-savant'. As a wellto-do stockbroker he was able to invest considerable time and money into studies of nature, first entomology and subsequently diatoms. The latter subject flourished in the late 19th century and, among his international contemporaries, Kinker was regarded as "the only Dutch diatomist of renown". There is a marked discrepancy between this reputation in his own time and his complete obscurity since, for which there are two reasons; Kinker did not publish, and his collection was not known to exist. Our discovery of the virtually intact Kinker diatom collection after it had vanished for a century can be regarded as a cultural heritage conservation paradigm; the collection is scientifically significant and can be developed into a rich source of information for micropalaeontological, biostratigraphic and biodiversity studies. The conservation project now under way illustrates the importance of a synergy between materials and archives, because Kinker's extensive correspondence and notebooks have been preserved and are essential to the conservation, documentation and future exploitation of these valuable materials. Although Kinker cannot be regarded as a productive scientist, his importance as an 'information node' is now evident.