[NHCOLL-L:3625] Are study skins passe? Looking for interviewees.

[Elizabeth Merritt]

Dear Colleagues, 
 
AAM has been approached by Mary Roach, the author of the New York Times bestseller Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. (Ms. Roach has written for Outside, National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR's "All Things Considered." She is a Frequent Contributor at the New York Times Book Review, a former columnist for Salon.com and a Contributing Editor at the science magazine Discover. )
 
She is looking into a possible short feature for the Atlantic-an article about whether traditional museum specimen collections are being rendered passé by DNA tests. 
 
"Once upon a time", she writes "taxonomists would differentiate between two identical-looking, say, spiny rats, by comparing the baculi (penis bones). Now you just look at the DNA.  The classic specimen collection is an endangered species.  As with library card catalogues a few years back, I'm imagining there's some controversy over whether to maintain them or quietly throw them out.  Whom would you suggest I talk to?  For the story to work, I'd need to find some fabulously esoteric specimen collection that's in danger of being given the heave-ho."
 
If you have any ideas about whom we might suggest for her to talk to, or any "esoteric specimen collection in danger of being given the heave-ho" as it is supplanted by DNA collections, please reply to me and to Eileen Goldspiel at AAM before close of business on Friday, November 2. Thank you!  (And please don't write back to me to explain all the reasons that the thesis per se is wrong-I bet I can think of all your arguments ahead of time! But it would be nice to see natural history collections, and their uses, get national coverage in the Atlantic, don't you think?)
 
 
Elizabeth Merritt 
Director, Museum Advancement & Excellence 
SPNHC Liaison to the RC-AAM
American Association of Museums 
1575 Eye Street N.W., Suite 400 
Washington, DC 20005 
(202)218-7661
 
 
Plan now to attend the 2008 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo(tm)
www.aam-us.org/am/08
 
 
 
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