[NHCOLL-L:1873] another museum under siege

[Phil Myers]

The systematics collections of the Michigan State University Museum 
are under assault by MSU's central administration.  Plans are under 
consideration that would greatly reduce numbers of both support staff 
and curators.  The collection would likely remain at Michigan State 
but simply be unavailable for most research purposes. 

The MSU Museum has outstanding collections of small mammals from 
South America, Mexica, and Africa, as well as extensive holdings from 
the Great Lakes region.  It also has a remarkable collection of large 
African mammals, notably bovids.  The Museum includes a large 
collection of birds, with significant numbers of specimens from South 
America, Asia, Mexico and Africa; considerable holdings of reptiles 
and amphibians from the Great Lakes Region, Mexico and Central 
America; and fishes from Ecuador and Michigan.  Its paleontological 
holdings include important collections of Late Pleistocene vertebrate 
megafauna from Michigan and the Great Lakes region, Cenozic 
amphibians and reptiles from Michigan and the Upper Midwest, and 
Permian amphibians and reptiles from Texas.

Dean Estelle McGroarty of the MSU College of Natural Science is 
collecting letters and e-mails about this threatened action.   She 
has said that the most helpful communications will be from people who 
know the collection and/or who might be affected by changes to its 
accessibility, rather than general comments about the importance of 
natural history collections.  She is also interested in hearing about 
research that uses natural history collections in new and innovative 
ways. Dean McGroarty's e-mail address is mcgroar1 at msu.edu.



-- 
Philip  Myers
Assoc. Prof., Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Assoc. Curator, Museum of Zoology
University of Michigan

tel. (734) 647-2206
FAX (734) 763-4080
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/nhcoll-l/attachments/20030325/ee0123d3/attachment.html