Julianne Snider of the Illinois State Museum posted
information at the request of a third party regarding the Greene
Museum and the Greene Geological Collection at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  There are several incorrect and misleading
statements in the posted article that readers should know.
 
     Contrary to the lead statement in the posted text, the
Secretary of the Interior designated the Greene Museum as a
National Historic Landmark--not the Museum and the Greene
Geological Collection.  UWM did recommend against designating the
Museum as a National Historic Landmark since the University
planned to move the Greene Collection out of the Museum and felt
that the Collection was a greater national treasure than the
building.
 
     Prior to the National Historic Landmark consideration, the
University had completed construction of a new building to house
the Department of Geosciences and the Greene Geological
Collection.  Special provisions were incorporated into the design
of the new building for compact storage of the Collection and for
the display of portions of the Collection.  The mineral portion
of the Greene Collection was transferred to the new facilities
without problems in July 1993.  The  fossil portion of the
Collection is scheduled to be moved in June 1994.  The move of
the fossils has been planned under the guidance of a
paleontologist on the staff of the Milwaukee Public Museum and is
patterned on the procedures followed in the successful transfer
of the mineral collection.
 
     UWM has no intention of destroying the Greene Museum or the
Greene Geological Collection.  The simple facts are that (1) the
Museum itself is badly in need of repair and remodeling to meet
current building codes, (2) new space has been provided in which
the Greene Geological Collection will be kept intact, and (3) a
curator has been employed to enter full details of the collection
on a computerized data base to make it more accessible to
researchers.
 
     Members of the Greene family and the National Park Service
have been advised of the University's plans.  Some members of the
Greene family disapprove of the move of the collection.
 
     Also, contrary to the previously posted text, the Park
Service and independent museum collections experts have not
informed the University that moving the collection out of the
museum building for any reason will destroy the historical
importance of the Greene Geological Collection and seriously
jeopardize its safety and usefulness.
 
     The National Park Service did advise a member of the Greene
family that movement of the collection would impair the integrity
of the Landmark designation of the Museum building.  This is
significantly different from saying that the historical
importance of the collection would be destroyed or its safety or
usefulness jeopardized.  The Park Service statement simply
recognizes what the University has stated from the start; that
the Museum, without the Collection, is less suited for National
Historic Landmark designation.
 
     The following section provides additional details on the
University's plans for the Greene Collection and the Greene
Museum.  Please feel free to contact me for any specific
questions regarding these plans.
 
Transfer of the Thomas A. Greene Geological Collection
                                  to the
                           Lapham Science Center
 
 
Introduction
 
     The Thomas A. Greene Geological Collection is an excellent
collection of Silurian fossils and minerals housed at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  The collection has been
stored in the Greene Museum on the University campus.  The Greene
Museum, over the years, has been used for classes, for staging
field trips, and for storage of field samples of rock.   The
building facilities are antiquated and do not comply with modern
building code requirements.  Climate control within the building
is marginal due to the lack of air conditioning and the age of
the heating system.  Portions of the building slab have settled
causing noticeable cracking and shifting of interior walls.  The
University plans to remodel the Greene Museum and the adjacent
Sabin Hall.
 
     For some time the University's master development plan has
included the relocation of the Greene Collection to specially
designed space in the Lapham Science Center.  Compact storage
facilities in the basement of the Lapham Science Center will
provide secure storage for the Greene Collection.  The Department
of Geosciences--the principal user of the collection within the
University community--is now located in the new Science Center.
The University prepared and submitted an environmental impact
statement (EIS) regarding the Science Center and the transfer of
the Greene Collection in the Fall of 1986.  Public hearings were
held on the EIS in December, 1986, and February, 1987.
 
     The University occupied the Lapham Science Center in the
summer of 1992.  The Department of Geosciences moved from Sabin
Hall to the new Science Center at that time.
 
     In the summer of 1993 the Department of  Geosciences,
assisted by William Metropolis, Assistant Curator of the Harvard
University Mineralogical Museum, moved the mineral portion of the
Greene Collection to the storage facilities in the Lapham Science
Center.  The movement of the mineral collection, although
considerably smaller than the fossil collection, provided
valuable insights into what would be required to transfer the
fossil collection while ensuring that no aspect of the original
collection would be damaged.
 
Preparation
 
     The Dean of the College of Letters and Science has appointed
a Geoscience Special Collections Committee to recommend policies
concerning the preservation, transfer, display, and use of the
Greene and other collections formerly housed in the Greene
Museum.  The committee consists of Associate Dean Robert Hall,
Associate Professor Keith Sverdrup, Assistant Professor Mark
Harris, Assistant Dean James Sullivan, Adjunct Professor Peter
Sheehan, and Adjunct Associate Professor Rodney Watkins.  Sheehan
and Watkins are curators of Geology at the Milwaukee Public
Museum.
 
     A key to the successful move of the Greene fossil collection
will be the conscientiousness and training of the personnel who
will assist in the move.  The University has appointed Rodney
Watkins  Curator of the Greene Collection.  Dr. Watkins will be
responsible for supervising all aspects of the move.  He
specializes in Silurian fossils and has been a Curator of Geology
at the Milwaukee Public Museum since 1988.  He received his
doctoral degree from Oxford University in 1975, where his thesis
dealt with Silurian fossil assemblages of the Welsh Borderland.
In addition to articles on many other aspects of geology, Dr.
Watkins has published nineteen scientific papers and four
abstracts on Silurian paleontology of Sweden, England, Wales,
Ireland, Canada, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
He received a 1991 best paper award from the journal Palaios for
an article on the Silurian interreef fauna in Wauwatosa.  Dr.
Watkins' latest paper, "The Silurian (Wenlockian) reef fauna of
southeastern Wisconsin," is a major study of Milwaukee Public
Museum (MPM) collections which are similar in nature to those of
the Greene collection.
 
     Two other trained paleontologists from the Milwaukee Public
Museum will assist Dr. Watkins in the move.  Patricia Burke has a
masters degree in Geosciences from UWM and specializes in
Ordovician-Silurian brachiopods.  Paula Ritter works with
Silurian collections at MPM as a Museum Assistant, and she is
currently pursuing a bachelors degree in Geosciences at UWM.
 
 
The Move of the Fossil Collection
 
     When the mineral collection from the Greene Museum was moved
to the Lapham Science Addition last summer, the collection was
placed in drawers from the new compact storage facility and
transported to the new location.  All elements of the collection
were housed in drawers with a labeling system consistent with the
original Greene Museum labeling.   In cases where the original
storage was considered too dense, material was placed in two
separate drawers with suffixes A and B.  A similar procedure will
be followed in the move of the fossil collection.  The minerals
now occupy 204 drawers in the 1,360 drawer compact storage system
in the Lapham Science Addition.  The Greene fossil collection is
presently stored in 450 drawers in the Greene Museum.  With over
1,100 drawers available in the new facility to house the fossil
collection, the overcrowding of many of the present drawers in
the Greene Museum will be eliminated.  The basic procedures for
the move of the fossil collection will be as follows:
 
          1)  Drawers from the new museum facility in Lapham Hall
     will be brought to the old building.  Specimens will be
     transferred from old drawers to new drawers in precisely the
     same arrangement.  Each new drawer will be given the same
     outside label as the old drawer.  The specimens in many of
     the old drawers in the Greene Museum are stacked and overly
     crowded.  To alleviate this problem, more than one new
     drawer in the Science Center will be used to house the
     contents of a single old drawer, and the new drawers will be
     labeled with suffixes A, B, etc.
 
          2)  Specimens will be cleaned of dust as they are being
     transferred.  Small, precision vacuum equipment designed to
     clean computers will be used for this task.
 
          3)  Old specimen trays, which are brittle and dust
     covered, will be discarded, and specimens will be placed in
     newly purchased trays for the transfer and storage in the
     new facility.
 
          4)  Greene's original labels will be vacuumed, put into
     acid-free, clear envelopes, and placed in the new trays with
     their specimens.
 
 
          5)  Once specimens are transferred to the new drawers,
     pre-cut cotton packing will be placed in the drawers to
     immobilize the specimens during the move.
 
          6)  Three to five drawers will be strapped together
     with plastic strapping, one drawer sealing the cotton
     packing over the drawer below.  The top drawer will be empty
     and used to seal to entire stack.
 
          7)  At the new facility in Lapham Hall, strapping and
     packing material will be removed, and the drawers will be
     placed in the compact storage area.
 
          8)  Drawer arrangement, specimen arrangement within
     drawers, and both outside and inside labels will be
     precisely the same as in the Greene building.  No
     information or previous curation efforts will be lost.
 
 
Curation of the Greene Fossil Collection
 
     Once the Greene fossil collection has been housed in the new
facilities, a modern, computerized curation program will be
initiated by Dr. Watkins.  The specimen number, drawer location,
taxonomic identification, type of preserved part, and locality of
origin will be recorded for each specimen as part of an
electronic database.  This database will be operated within a
computer software system known as SAS and will follow a standard
format in use at the Milwaukee Public Museum.  The SAS system
permits sorting and cross-indexing of data so that the number of
specimens and drawer location of a taxon can be very rapidly
determined.  Statistical and graphic programs within the SAS
system are also available for research applications of the
specimen data.  Once completed, on-line curation of the Greene
collection will result in a database for Silurian fossils that is
compatible with the database maintained at the Milwaukee Public
Museum.  Merging of these computer databases will result in an
extremely effective research tool.  The database for the Greene
collection will also be made available to paleontologists world
wide through Internet access.   Another aspect of curation will
be computer generation of new specimen labels.  These will be
printed on acid-free card stock in type faces of professional
quality.
 
          As Curator of the Greene Museum, Dr. Rodney Watkins
will supervise the curation project described above.  He will be
assisted by one or more student assistants.  Watkins will also be
responsible for all visits, loan requests, correspondence, and
requests for information about the collection.
 
 
The New Storage Facility
 
     The new storage facility in Lapham Hall is a secure,
temperature-controlled and clean room which will hold the entire
Greene collection in a compact and efficient arrangement.  Since
the collection will be cleaned prior to the move and the original
Greene labels placed in acid-free clear envelopes and new storage
boxes, the specimens will be in a cleaner, more secure and
accessible location than in the present museum.  The location in
the Lapham Science Center ensures that the collection will be
readily available for researchers and portions will be displayed
in the new display area on the first floor of Lapham Hall.  Data
on the collection will also be much more accessible to
researchers via electronic means.
 
 
The Greene Museum
 
     The University master development plan calls for the
remodeling of the Greene Museum after the transfer of the Greene
Collection and receipt of state funding (expected in 1997-99).
The remodeling will correct structural defects in the building
and bring the building into compliance with current building
codes.  After the remodeling, the main floor of the building
could be used for displays of portions of the Greene Collection
and other significant geological and archaeological displays.