[Nhcoll-l] Care for Teaching Collections

[Amy Smith]

Good morning!

I myself am currently working on a geological teaching collection at the
CMU Museum of Cultural and Natural History, and have assembled several
teaching collections for loan in the past. I would get a better idea on
what you may need if you could tell me, are you focusing on teaching
collections that are portable and available as outgoing loans, collections
that remain in-house, or both?

In my experience, the outgoing teaching collections were always designed
and expected to be handled, so only expendable, very common specimens would
be included so it is no big loss if something happens to one of them. I
have seen carved ethafoam and acid-free boxes used to house the specimens
within an overall tote. I would like to note that if something like a rock
or mineral teaching collection is on your to do list, it is key to keep the
tote itself fairly small (i.e., use the half sized ones as opposed to the
larger ones) because a collection of these types of specimens becomes heavy
pretty quickly.

The current collection I am creating now is an in-house design, and I am
heading in the direction of not having the specimens be physically
touchable (due primarily to possible loss and secondarily to possible
damage). We are looking at having a space under two of our pertinent
exhibits that will hold two rows of six drawers each, with the specimens
stabilized under plexiglass. To demonstrate things like mineral properties
that students would ideally be able to perform themselves, I want to fit
props such as streak plates marked with the pertinent mineral next to the
specimen as a compromise between access and security.

As far as supplying people with literature on the subject, what do you
think about using the National Park Service Conservograms? This way you
could pick out the pertinent topics.

http://www.nps.gov/museum/publications/conserveogram/cons_toc.html#collectionpreservation

I would be delighted to talk with you more about this sort of thing if you
would find it helpful.

Have a great day!

Dr. Amy Smith, Volunteer
Central Michigan University Museum of Cultural and Natural History
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859
http://bluepteranodon.tk/

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 12:27 PM, Susan Gallagher <sugal at voicenet.com> wrote:

> Chief Naturalist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20121210/d3e254f7/attachment.html