[Nhcoll-l] Alcohol bottle trays

Tue Jun 24 04:38:22 EDT 2014

The (former) Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen (now part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark) uses wooden trays in almost every wet collection, except for large size specimens and containers, which won’t fit in. They are kept on open metal shelves. I believe we have three standard sizes, depending on the shelf dimensions, the largest trays being about 24 x 50 x 7  cm. They are stable and reasonably comfortable to take out carry. They are not considered to increase the fire hazard to any significant degree, but on the other hand I am not aware that there have been serious calculations on that subject.

Tom

Tom Schiøtte
Natural History Museum of Denmark (Zoology)
Universitetsparken 15
DK-2100 Copenhagen OE
Denmark

TSchioette at snm.ku.dk

From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Margaret Thayer
Sent: 24. juni 2014 04:19
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Alcohol bottle trays

The insect/arachnid/myriapod and other invertebrate collections at the Field Museum have used aluminum trays for years to hold jars of various sizes in our closed steel cabinets. The photo shows our standard 2 oz jars (used mostly for 16,000+ bulk samples), but we also store half-liter French jars in the trays and narrower but taller old Mason jars in a narrower size. The main intention was simply improving access to jars in the back, allowing us to have low clearance between the jar tops and the shelves. It makes a huge difference in the efficiency of moving collections around.  I'm not aware that we ever had any issues with the fire marshal about them. (Jars sitting on top of jars is NOT part of the storage system! I took the photo years ago for a talk about the contents of the jars.)

Margaret

[Inline image 1]

Margaret K. Thayer, Ph.D.        mthayer at fieldmuseum.org<mailto:mthayer at fieldmuseum.org>
Curator Emeritus, Field Museum of Natural History<http://fieldmuseum.org/>
Lecturer, Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago
Fieldiana<http://fieldmuseum.org/explore/department/publications/fieldiana> Life and Earth Sciences - Associate Editor (Zoology)
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PHONE: +1-312-665-7741 (direct)    FAX: +1-312-665-7754
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Beetle Tree of Life project<http://insects.oeb.harvard.edu/ATOL/index.htm>          FMNH Insects collection database<http://emuweb.fieldmuseum.org/arthropod/Query.php>

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On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 8:55 AM, Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu<mailto:prc44 at drexel.edu>> wrote:
Folks,

Does anyone know of a fluid collection in which loose bottles and jars have been placed in long, narrow open-top boxes or trays on open shelving? We are considering doing this, in order to make our collection both safer and easier to maintain. I know many Entomology collections arrange 4- and 6-dram vials in long racks (we do this too), but I haven’t seen the same thing done for larger bottles and jars.

Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
callomon at ansp.org<mailto:callomon at ansp.org> Tel 215-405-5096<tel:215-405-5096> - Fax 215-299-1170<tel:215-299-1170>

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