University museum in the service of the academic community University museums in Poland nowadays include about 70 entities operating within the structures of universities. Many of them have been established in recent years, frequently they have quite low budgets, insufficient staff, modest expertise and premises. The paper includes several propositions how such museums' operations could use the broadly defined academic community to draw professional knowledge and get support in everyday word, gathering collections and building prestige. The academic community is defined as the entire community of the university: current administration staff, faculty, retired staff and faculty, their families, students, but also inhabitants of the neighbourhood. University museums, like no others, have the unique scientific support of science laboratories (to be used for conservation works), scientific staff (research on art and science history) or specialist IT staff (stock-taking and digitalisation of collections). Using this potential should be made a part of the museums' development strategies. Our university museums are the only ones to have unique access to a pool of creative activities generated by students. In most university museums students are not sufficiently involved by museum staff. This group of young people, changing every five years, and their activities may fill the museums' exposition space and surroundings. Students make a constant and endless asset-it is up to museum staff how it will be used for the needs related to building institutional image. The specific character of this potential is a unique basis to build university museums as modern institutions-open to dialogue, education, popularisation of science and art, open to learning and spreading the latest achievements on the local and global levels.

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From June to November 1793 Grodno (now Belarus) was the place of the last session of Parliament of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the participation of king Stanisław August Poniatowski, and it was where the second partition of Poland was approved. In the days free of parliamentary debates, Grodno’s Dominicans prepared a series of physics experiments for the king. The course of the experiments and their subject matter is known from a press release (Pismo Peryodyczne Korrespondenta 2, January 9, 1794, pp. 35–42). It is a type of daily report informing about 18 meetings, each time indicating their subject matter. This report was sufficient to recreate the course and the type of the experiments. Three thematic groups presented by the Dominicans can be distinguished. The first is a presentation of the physics cabinet – the king was visited, among others, the Nooth’s apparatus to produce “carbonated water”, a geological collection and other items used in the later shows. The second series of demonstrations was devoted to issues related to electricity. The idea and nature of lightning was also demonstrated. The third series of presentations concerned the properties of gases. In addition to other demonstrations, the Dominicans prepared an experiment which presented the process of producing water from oxygen and hydrogen. The experiment lasted all day, during which the reagents were measured: the volume of gases that were used and the mass of the water obtained. The report brings a lot of important information, indicating the level of scientific knowledge and the experimental skills of the Dominicans. It is evidence of how modern physics was taught by the Dominicans with the use of appropriate instruments for this purpose. It is also a source of knowledge about school equipment in Poland. Additionally, the report is so far one of the few well-documented public demonstrations prepared for the king. It also confirms the view that the king Stanislaus August was a broad-minded intellectual interested in science.

The article describes synthetically the achievements of Professor Katalin Éva Vámos, Habilitated Doctor (22 May 1950 – 25 July 2015), a historian of science, museologist of science and technology, a longtime director of the Hungarian Museum of Science, Technology and Transport in Budapest (MTESZ).

The origins of radiology in Poland according to documents and exhibits in the collections of the Jagiellonian University In January 1896, a few days after the announcement of the discovery of X-rays, experiments with X-ray photography began in Cracow, giving the beginnings of Polish radiology. To this day, radiographs of various objects, like high-quality medical x-ray photographs, X-ray apparatuses, and lamps have survived from this period. A description of early X-ray photographs and scientific publications by professors of the Jagiellonian University are kept as a valuable source of information on the level of conducted experiments. The Polish pioneers of this field were Karol Olszewski (first Polish X-ray photographs) and the doctors of medicine Alfred Obaliński, Mieczysław Nartowski, Walery Jaworski, and Karol Mayer. The authors describe the publications and objects stored in the units of the Jagiellonian University documenting the beginnings of Polish radiology.