[Nhcoll-l] Vial jar system

[Simon Moore]

Thanks Lex and Paul,

All of this puts me in mind of Thomas Pole’s rather infamous but insightful remark:  “It is found to be attended with no small difficulty, to enclose wet preparations in glasses, so as to prevent effectually the evaporation of the spirits, which occasions very considerable trouble, and no small expense to keep a large anatomical collection in good order”. Thomas Pole, 1790.

With all good wishes, Simon.

Simon Moore MIScT, RSci, FLS, ACR
Conservator of Natural Sciences and Cutlery Historian,
www.natural-history-conservation.com 




On 16 Mar 2016, at 20:35, Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu> wrote:

> In moving from a “many vials in one jar” to “vials in racks” model, we acknowledged that a regular inspection and maintenance cycle is essential in a fluid-preserved collection, and must be scheduled into funded staff time. No combination of jars and closures that is economically viable can guarantee against failure, 100%, indefinitely. Reducing the total number of closures for a given number of lots does reduce the time it takes to inspect, but against that must be weighed the demerits already discussed here.
> We designed new metal trays for our jars and vials that slide on and off shelves smoothly and allow up to 50 containers of mixed sizes to be inspected simultaneously. This is the first major rehousing of the 50,000-jar Malacology wet collection since 1976, and we anticipate re-lidding everything again in another 40 years. Next time, however, it will go a lot faster.
> We will be writing this up in due course, but in the meantime anyone interested in learning more about this tray system can contact me off line.
>  
>  
> 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 Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

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