What might be fun is if we set up a "bloodline game" for each wing of the museum, as the curators - each one Professor this or Doctor that or Maestro whatever - all specialists in something or other who meet and have families while the adventurers (or we might call them "Scientists in the Field" or something else...) attempt to bring back yet another curiosity of the natural world. The children who survive to adulthood would, of course, become specialists in fields that somehow combined their parent's specialties (unless they chose to rebel and cross over to another wing entirely, the ungrateful little whelps!) All the specialists would have free reign on starting at the bottom of one field or other and climbing the academic ladder to possible Chancellorship of the entire museum!
If we can get the adventurers to all retire at one of the wings of the museums (or barring that, a nearby hillock), other adventurers could eventually recruit them for their "fact finding expeditions" as well. If retired adventurers eventually can marry and have families, I do wonder if we'll see a father and son duo of archeologists both named "Dr. Jones" attempt to return to the Museum bearing an artifact goblet...
Of course, some academic discussions can get quite passionate, causing one overbred buffoon to lose his or her temper. Berzerk Doctors of Retrozoology or Professors of Extrusive Harmonic Resonance are nothing to be trifled with! Thier logics can have a deadly persuasion.
Sure, somedwarf may have originally been called a "pump operator", but an academic version of this would become an "Aqua-dynamicist" specializing in the properties of fluids in motion. Obviously, all specialists want to be noted for their important work, so they may assist colleagues in their researches, but bitterly denounce other aqua-dynamicists as con-artists and fools... (The role-play could get really fun while we wait for whomever is "out in the field" to get done with their turn and return to the Museum with another new submission and the acclaim of a returning hero...)