scholarly journals Making Education Collections Safe to Touch: Safety Assessments and Data Maintenance

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e28197
Author(s):  
Kelsey Falquero ◽  
Katherine Roberts ◽  
Jessica Nakano
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Specimen Preparation ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Storage Space ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Vertebrate Zoology ◽  
Education And Outreach ◽  
Safety Assessments ◽  
And Storage

Q?rius is an interactive learning venue at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) designed specifically for a teen audience. The space gives visitors a chance to interact with museum specimens, especially in the Collections Zone. The Q?rius collections are non-accessioned education collections, belonging to the Office of Education and Outreach (E&O). The collections include the Museum’s seven disciplines – Anthropology, Botany, Entomology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mineral Sciences, Paleobiology, and Vertebrate Zoology. Starting in 2013, collections staff began performing safety assessments on specimens before their rehousing and storage in the publicly accessible Collections Zone. Risks assessed include sharpness, ingestibility, radioactivity, and contaminants (such as arsenic, mercury, and lead, which were historically used in specimen preparation or for pest management). Specimen and object fragility was also assessed. The goal of these assessments was to minimize risks to our visitors and to our collections. The safety assessments allow collections staff to make housing recommendations that would ensure the safety of NMNH’s visitors and the preservation of E&O’s collections in a publicly accessible storage space. This practice now extends to other pre-existing learning venues that contain publicly accessible portions of the E&O Collection, further minimizing risks. Staff have started adding the data gathered by these safety assessments to our collections management system, to protect the data from loss and to make the information easily accessible to staff. This poster relates to a second poster, Establishing Legal Title for Non-Accessioned Collections.

scholarly journals Reuniting Archaeology and Archives through the Smithsonian Institution’s Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Molly Kamph
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Northern Iraq ◽  
Management Group ◽  
Archaeological Collections ◽  
Archival Processing

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History recently conducted a two-year project to process and connect the archives and artifacts of archaeologists Ralph and Rose Solecki, most famous for their work at the sites of Shanidar Cave and Zawi Chemi Shanidar in northern Iraq. Through a collaboration between the archivally-focused National Anthropological Archives and the object-focused Department of Anthropology collections management group, the Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki Papers and Artifacts Project sought to set an example for archaeological collections and archives stewardship by preserving the association between archaeological specimens and archival records through an integrative methodology of archival processing and specimen cataloging to increase their value to future researchers. Further, the project provides a case study intended to contribute to interdisciplinary conversations about the enduring legacy of archaeologists and their collections within archives and museums through collaborative collections and archives management.

scholarly journals Taming Extinct Beasts: Strategies, Projects, and Metrics for Managing the World’s Largest Fossil Collection, the United States National Fossil Collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. e26151
Author(s):  
Kathy Hollis
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Quality ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Deliberate Strategy ◽  
Collections Care

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) Department of Paleobiology (Paleo) is the steward of the world’s largest fossil collection. The collection is made of 40 million objects housed in 11,000 cases plus 2,600 square meters in oversized housing, all spread over four separate facilities. The collection contains fossil representatives of the entire history of life. The Smithsonian has been accessioning fossils since the late 1880s, and the collection is actively growing through field research of museum scientists as well as through the acquisition of sizeable orphaned collections. The collection database (Axiell EMu) contains about 660,000 specimen catalog records of the estimated 14,000,000 records required to digitally database the entire collection. NMNH Paleo strives to care for and manage the collection in a way that meets the highest standards for collections accessibility and accountability. Our collections management priorities are: ensuring the collections are physically preserved, housed, and arranged to ensure long-term preservation and accessibility; making the collections holdings and associated data digitally discoverable and accessible through Smithsonian data-management systems and global data-sharing utilities; establishing and implementing best-practice systems for managing research-quality specimen data and data-lifecycle management; implementing sustainable workflows for mass-digitization specimen databasing, 2D and 3D imaging, georeferencing, and transcription of relevant collections labels and analog records; requiring all registration activities including acquisitions, loans, borrows, disposals, shipments, permits, and repository agreements meet the highest ethical and legal standards for documentation; leveraging our professional expertise in collections management to train students and avocational collectors in fossil collections care; and to actively collaborate with paleobiologists and other museum researchers and stakeholders to advance the discipline of paleobiology and collections-based research. Addressing these priorities at the scale of the NMNH Paleo collection requires a deliberate strategy and disciplined project management, especially given that staff and resources are limited. The NMNH and the overarching Smithsonian organizational structure use several museum- and institution-wide metrics and reporting systems for evaluating the collections against its strategic goals. Within NMNH Paleo, these metrics are applied to and enhanced by projects that address the priorities listed above. The projects presented here were developed as part of a strategy to meet departmental, museum, and institutional goals. They are integrated across the department and include surveys, assessments, and the development of data standards and workflows. The success of the projects is most dependent on strong communication and teamwork among the department staff.

Animal taxa named for Rollo H. Beck

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary M. Fellers
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
South America ◽  
Southern California ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
California Academy ◽  
Vertebrate Zoology ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

Rollo Howard Beck (1870–1950) was a professional bird collector who spent most of his career on expeditions to the Channel Islands off southern California, the Galápagos Islands, South America, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean. Some of the expeditions lasted as long as ten years during which time he and his wife, Ida, were often working in primitive conditions on sailing vessels or camps set up on shore. Throughout these expeditions, Beck collected specimens for the California Academy of Sciences, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at Berkeley (California), the American Museum of Natural History, and the Walter Rothschild Museum at Tring, England. Beck was one of the premier collectors of his time and his contributions were recognized by having 17 taxa named becki in his honor. Of these taxa, Beck collected 15 of the type specimens.

The palaeontological collection stored in the Department of Geology of the National Museum of Natural History NAS of Ukraine as a scientific heritage

Geo&Bio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (17) ◽  
pp. 136-147
Author(s):  
Galina Anfimova ◽  
◽  
Volodymyr Grytsenko ◽  
Kateryna Derevska ◽  
Kseniia Rudenko ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Scientific Heritage

Ocotea dilcherii, a new name for Ocotea obtusifolia (Berry) LaMotte (Lauraceae)

Phytotaxa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 239 (2) ◽  
pp. 199
Author(s):  
Sergei Vasilyevich Vikulin
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Type Specimen ◽  
Valid Species ◽  
Early Eocene ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Mississippi Embayment ◽  
Fossil Species ◽  
Early Oligocene ◽  
Leaf Remains ◽  
Nomen Novum

The fossil species  Oreodaphne obtusifolia Berry (1916: 301) was described, based on the fossil leaf remains of the most abundant laurel from the Early Eocene Wilcox Group sediments of Holly Springs: Marshall Co, Grenada Co., Miss.: Mississippi embayment (Southeastern North America). Nowadays, most systematists consider the extant Oreodaphne to be a member of Ocotea (Mez, 1889: 219; Rohwer, 1986; van der Werff, 2002; Chanderbali et al., 2001). LaMotte (1952) transferred Berry’s (1916: 301) combination to Ocotea, and this transfer was followed by Dilcher (1963), who reinforced attribution of Wilcox leaf megafossils to Ocotea by cuticular analysis of epidermis and stomata (Dilcher & Lott, 2005). However, according to Art. 53.1 of the ICN (McNeill et al.  2012) the name Ocotea obtusifolia (Berry) LaMotte (1952) is illegitimate because of the existence of the earlier overlooked homonym, Ocotea obtusifolia Kunth (1817: 165–166), an extant lauraceous species from Colombia (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, holotype: http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.P00128771). The homonymy between these fossil and extant American species of Ocotea was revealed during the description of the new fossil Early Oligocene species Ocotea rossica Vikulin from the south of the Middle-Russian upland (Vikulin, 2015: 326). Since Ocotea obtusifolia (Berry) LaMotte has been systematically recognized as a valid species in current use and it does not have any synonym, a nomen novum, O. dilcherii, is formally proposed here as a replaced name. Because a type specimen was not indicated among the validating illustrations of Berry (1916: pl. 80, fig. 1; pl. 83, fig. 2–5, and pl. 84, fig. 1 and 2), a lectotype must be designated here, from the specimens illustrated in the protologue (Berry, 1916: 301–302) amongst those perfect specimens with blunt leaf apex, which are very abundant in the clays at Puryear, Tenn. (Proposed lectotype: paleobotany collection # USNM 35867, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (USA), illustrated in Berry, 1916: 301, pl. 83, fig. 5.

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