[NHCOLL-L:5233] Re: question re: natural history loan support

[Carol Spencer]

Hi Mariko
We do this every year also, both for Cal Day (our big open house) and for
the Herpetology, Ornithology and I think the Mammalogy courses.
As we are on the university campus, we do not charge for this,  as this is
part of our mission (to educate students) and we include this in any
calculations of visitors and use of our collection, mainly to justify the
space that our museum uses on campus and also to exemplify how we educate
students (along with other outreach and direct student training).

The Herpetology class at Berkeley does have a TA that assists us with
pulling these specimens, and puts them into the freezer (for skeletal
specimens) for pest control, and organizes them before giving them back to
us, and then our students in curatorial put them away. You might ask the
course instructors if its possible that they could provide assistance from
undergrads that you oversee or provide graduate TA time for pulling and/or
putting specimens away.

Good luck
Carol

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 8:20 AM, Mariko Kageyama <aspeciosus at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Please pardon my cross-posting.
>
>
> Our university's natural history teaching collection of vertebrates are
> often loaned out to support university biology courses such as mammalogy
> taught at a research station off campus. It is not uncommon over a hundred
> specimens are requested and checked out at a time. To process such loans,
> staff labor time and supplies needed could be significant including cost for
> packing and boxing all the specimens. So far we have never charged for such
> services to support the university's undergraduate and graduate courses
> offered off campus, but we started wondering if there is any other
> institution in a similar scenario that charges a nominal or modest course
> support fee for this kind of collection service based on their policy, other
> than recouping loan shipping costs. If you do not mind sharing your
> experience or opinion with us, we would appreciate it.
>
>
> Mariko
>
>
> Mariko Kageyama
> Collections Manager, Vertebrate Zoology
> University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
> Boulder, CO
>
>


-- 
Carol L. Spencer, Ph.D.
Staff Curator of Herpetology & Researcher
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
3101 Valley Life Sciences Building
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA 94720-3160
atrox10 at gmail.com
atrox at berkeley.edu
TEL: 510-643-5778 /FAX: 510-643-8238

http://www.herpnet.org
http://mvz.berkeley.edu/
http://www.vertnet.org
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