[Nhcoll-l] Sleeves for Lepidopterans

[Douglas Yanega]

On 7/1/21 1:04 PM, Menard, Katrina wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was curious whether there are collections out there that store 
> sleeved lepidopteran material (like Odonata). We have a large amount 
> of butterflies that are stored in paper and glassine envelopes that 
> would take several lifetimes to spread, and we neither have the time 
> nor space to go that route. We like the idea of glassine sleeves as a 
> more permanent and protective way to store our enveloped material, but 
> wanted more input from the community on this.
>
We have plenty of odonates in glassines in our collection, but these 
appear to be some sort of plastic, and are therefore very different from 
the glassines used for leps. I suspect there may be issues surrounding 
the archival properties of the latter, especially since paper may be 
acidic. We do have some very old papered leps (in both plain paper and 
glassines), and I see signs that there may be chemical interactions 
taking place; if you dump a lep out of a very old glassine, there is 
often a visible "stain" where the specimen was, and it's not just the 
body. These old glassines are also distinctly yellowed. It's reason to 
be suspicious, at least.

Peace,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82