HANGING out with dinosaurs, tending butterfly specimens, polishing gems and feeding cockroaches doesn’t feature on most job descriptions.

Oxford University Museum of Natural History has three quarters of a million visitors every year, an annual turnover of £3m but just 30 full-time staff to do all of that.

Luckily the Parks Road institution, which opened in 1861, is helped by an army of 500 volunteers and another two part-time workers.

Now it is up for a national award worth £100,000 which it hopes could help it recruit even more.

The museum is one of six finalists in this year’s Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year.

Organisers invited the museum to apply after it spent £2m on removing, cleaning and resealing 8,500 diamond-shaped glass panes in its roof in 2013.

But museum director Paul Smith said the 14-month closure while the roof was installed had given staff a chance to think seriously about what sort of a museum they wanted to be when they reopened. The answer was a more modern, accessible and fun one.

Dr Smith, 55, said: “We have a lot of volunteers who make a huge difference to the museum.

“At the moment we have two part-time staff looking after all of them and we would like to expand that and get more staff support volunteers.

“Last year we ran a project Count Me In, trying to pull in an even wider range including those with visual and mobility impairments.

“Within a few weeks we had people in explaining specimens to the public and if we win we would like to expand that.

“Our mission is to make as many people interested in the natural environment as we can, and this award could make a huge difference.”

He said the museum would use the prize money to employ more staff to help manage even more volunteers.

And with competition judges set to inspect the museum in person on June 19, staff are even busier than usual making the museum a buzzing hive of learning and enjoyment.

One of the projects it hopes will win judges’ hearts is sending the museum’s famous dodo specimen, the Oxford Dodo, on a tour of the UK from Land’s End to John O’Groats in June, visiting 20 museums along the way.

The museum has also just opened a four-month exhibition called Biosense, which takes visitors on a walking tour of selected exhibits which demonstrate different ways organisms sense the world around them.

And earlier this month the museum even hosted a gig featuring three Oxford bands. Dr Smith added: “There is a side to the museum which is serious teaching and serious research but we also want to convey a really energetic and playful side.”