Our type specimens are stored in a special, fire resistant cabinet for
which only the curator and museum director have a key.  This cabinet is
designated under the museum's disaster plan for priority removal and
relocation in the event of fire, flood, act of war, etc..  The specimens
are housed in individual, custom-made, acid-free boxes with custom-cut foam
nests.  They are annotated as holotypes both in the cases and on our
database.

Due to the nature of its construction, this cabinet will not accommodate
larger specimens.  These fossils are kept nearby in the paleo offices
rather than in the general collections area.  The museum registrar,
security, and director are made aware of the importance of these additional
cases.  For these larger specimens, light-weight, custom jackets are
constructed using archival, acid-free liners, fiberglass, and FGR-95
plaster.  These jackets are preferable to traditional jackets for long-term
storage because they are stronger, lighter, acid-free, and will not
exfoliate bits of plaster into the cabinets.  Additionally, these jackets
are two-sided so that they sandwich the fossil in an enclosed, protective
cocoon.  In this way, the specimen need not be handled for study.  Rather,
the jacket itself can be flipped over to allow inspection of the obverse.

We do not exhibit our type specimens, rather we exhibit casts of these
objects.  This policy ensures a measure of physical protection for the
fossils and facilitates scholarly access.  We also do not loan our type
specimens to other institutions, nor do we ship them for any reason.  All
research, casting, photography, etc. is done in-house.

Regards,
Kyle McQuilkin
Paleontology
Museum of Texas Tech











>This question goes out to all the curators/collection managers in the
>paleontological museums and repositories.  I am looking for different
>views on how museums/repositories store and care for their type
>collections.  This is for a research paper on collection management of
>type collections, so any information would be appreciated!
>Thanks
>Dave
>
>
>
>
>
>********************
>David Schultz
>Invertebrate paleontology student
>University of Iowa
>Department of Geology
>121 Trowbridge Hall
>Iowa City, IA  52242
>(319)351-1899
>[log in to unmask]
>********************
>
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