[NHCOLL-L:5043] Re: how do you store your wet specimens?

[Paul Callomon]

We store our molluscan and general invertebrates collection (about 50,000 lots) in glass flint and bail jars on steel racking. The collection is ordered by catalog number, and the collection completely databased. You can thus browse it on the computer and then go and pull the lots off the shelf. 
The advantages of this approach are:

1) the space is used most efficiently (no gaps for expansion at the end of each family) 

2) the oldest lots, which are most likely to require maintenance, are at one end of the room, with a smooth gradation to the newest ones.

The disadvantage is that you have to computerize the collection. If you haven't done this step yet, it's enough to do it fairly simply for the time being: all you need is genus (linked to higher taxa via a taxonomical dictionary), species and rough locality (region and country). In most cases, that's all someone needs to know to determine whether they want to see the lot or not. On a laptop, with the stuff in front of you, this takes between 30 seconds and one minute per lot if the labels in the jar are clear. As time permits, you can then expand each record to add number of specimens, exact locality and so on. 

PC.


Hi all, 

Paul Callomon
Collections Manager
Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
Department of Malacology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
Tel 215-405-5096
Fax 215-299-1170

>>> Jessica Rosales <rosales at mail.utexas.edu> 10/27/2010 1:09 PM >>>


We here at the TNHC are exploring options to deal with space issues for our fish and herp collections.  One idea is a system that shelves jars according to their size, then by catalog number within each size. A downside to this method is of course that the collection is no longer browseable.  Another idea, that may or not be used in conjunction with the first, is using bar codes on each jar to make retrieval easier regardless of the storage method.

I'd like to know who out there stores their wet collections using either of these two methods, type of collection(s), the size of your collection(s) (lots), how well this system works for you, and how long it has been in place.

Thank you,

Jess


Jessica Rosales
Ichthyology Collection Manager
Texas Natural History Collections
Texas Natural Science Center
The University of Texas at Austin
10100 Burnet Road, PRC 176/R4000
Austin, TX 78758-4445 USA

512.471.8845 voice
512.471.9775 fax

Find out more about the Texas Natural History Collections:




On 10/20/2010 11:01 PM, NHCOLL-L Natural History Collections List wrote: 
			    NHCOLL-L Digest 2111

Topics covered in this issue include:

  1) [NHCOLL-L:5012] US Government Policy on Scientific Collections
	by WEITZMAN at si.edu
  2) [NHCOLL-L:5013] Fwd: US Government Policy on Scientific Collections
	by CAHawks at aol.com
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