NC State University Insect Museum

It's not much to look at just yet, but here's how the new room is unfolding:

The new space is still a bit of a hodgepodge, but once it gets those certain decorative touches and acquires more equipment it'll start to look like home.

I've been slow to get this info to the Web, but here marks the first in a (short) series of posts that describe the most recent (major) changes in the NCSU Insect Museum. We were awarded a collections improvement grant (NSF DBI-0847924) in September that has several components (read our proposal). The bulk of this funding goes towards addressing space issues, and this post outlines why we needed new cabinets and additional room.

Reason 1: With almost 96% of available drawers and unit trays occupied by specimens we were functionally FULL (i.e., more time was spent shuffling specimens than curating). We ordered 22 cabinets to give us some b-r-e-a-t-h-i-n-g room (we need to accommodate a rapidly growing Hymenoptera collection, for one), but where should they go? Our rooms were also functionally FULL. Well, the department assigned us about 500 additional square feet on the 3rd floor of Gardner Hall. We moved the slide and alcohol-preserved specimens down there and made that new room our primary work area (in order to prevent the orphaning of these components of our collection; check out what SPNHC has to say about threatened collections). The new cabinets for expansion now fill the space left by the wet and slide collections.

Reason 2: We needed to replace an array of 56 twelve-drawer cabinets that were substandard in a variety of ways. They didn't seal properly, which potentially allowed pests in and definitely leaked fumigant out:

And the cabinets wouldn't allow you to pull a drawer out unless the door was alllllllll the way open. This resulted in many incidents where the drawer (and its specimens) were jolted by a hard slam against the door:

That is definitely not good for the long term safety of delicate insect specimens. We ordered an additional 28 cabinets (each with slots for 24 drawers) to replace these old cabinets. Once the drawers are transferred to their new cabinets we'll start reducing our naphthalene use and begin the processes of drawer imaging and collection profiling. More on that next time.

I finally posted the project description from our 2008 NSF Biological Research Collections proposal on the Web for all to read. Things are moving quickly here - we ordered 50 new 24-drawer cabinets, started acquiring our imaging equipment (may be a few surprises here - stay tuned!), and are about to test some barcode printers. It's all happening before I had a chance to catch my breath and describe our proposed museum improvements. Here's a quick summary of our motivation for writing this proposal:

1. We are functionally full (96% capacity), paralyzed by the lack of expansion space.
2. Our large array of older, poorly sealing cabinets necessitates vast amounts of fumigant (naphthalene), which makes our work environment unpleasant and potentially unhealthy.
3. Our outdated data base did not include specimen-level data (e.g., collecting event), and the public version is not update-able.
4. Other than this website and blog and our outreach activities we have almost no public presence.

You can probably predict our proposed solutions to these conundrums. We are replacing 56 of our old, sloppy 12-drawer cabinets with 28 shiny, new 24-drawer cabinets, and adding an additional 22 of these 24-drawer cabinets for expansion. The gaskets on the new cabinets enable us to reduce our naphthalene by about 90% (freeing up 40 drawers worth of space, if you can believe it). We'll also be barcoding, imaging, and databasing specimens (and even imaging drawers), with all of our data managed in and availed on the Web through mx. We'll cap off this project with a series of educational displays and materials (a physical public presence!).

There will be a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering before I can show off the cool tricks we have in mind for our specimen data. In the meantime I hope that posting the proposal facilitates dialog about what we're attempting to accomplish and how. We're committed to posting more info about efficient workflows, failed experiments, task benchmarking, and other relevant curatorial issues as we work our way through the process. Any feedback is appreciated!

Recent concerns about the humidity level in insect collections has prompted us to initiate a yearlong study of the levels in our Museum. Last summer I recorded the humidity levels for several weeks, three times a day (morning, noon and late afternoon) and noticed that the level in the collection room correlated with the outside humidity levels. Which as you can imagine in North Carolina fluctuate widely and can be rather high.

Twice weekly I will be recording the humidity levels in the collection room and in one of our oldest, poorly sealed cabinets. I will also report on the relative humidity level as recorded from a local TV station near the NCSU campus. These results will be recorded on our Insect Museum website. Just click on the calendar button to see the results.

Time to evaluate and top off the ethanol in our wet collection (check!) and to renew our institutional memberships (double check!). Our membership in the Biodiversity Information Standards group (TDWG) is now current, as is our membership in the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC). NCSU's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences covers our membership in the Natural Science Collections Alliance, and our CITES registration doesn't expire until 2012, so I think we're good to go for the next 12 months.

Catching up on our memberships reminded me to review (again, but this time for realz) TDWG's Natural Collections Descriptions (NCD) data standard. It's been out for awhile, but I haven't taken a serious look until now. I don't profess to be an data standards expert, but I have a keen awareness of why they exist. The NCD looks pretty straight forward, and here's what I think it'd look like for the Insect Museum (* fields are required):

Header

*Author: Andy Deans
*Record Created Date: 2009-01-15 [What's the standard date format? Dublin Core points to W3C's date and time formats]

Collection

Collection Identifier: urn:lsid:biocol.org:col:1024 [I guess this could also be 'http://insectmuseum.org/'?]
Acronym or Coden: NCSU [This is from the old Arnett list, but I am not sure how to "indicate the source"]
*Collection Name: North Carolina State University Insect Museum
Associated Person(s): Andy Deans, Bob Blinn
*Description: ["main description...suitable for a general audience" - note to self: write something up]
Extent: Approximately 1.4 million specimens classified in Insecta and Chelicerata
Collection Type: Museum [defined by TDWG as "An institution for the procurement, preservation, study and exhibition of specimens and objects of value."]
Common Name Coverage: insects and other terrestrial arthropods
Conservation Status: [note to self: revisit McGinley's collection profiling strategy and see about applying it to our research collection]
Development Status: Active growth [!]
Formation Period: 1890-present
Kingdom Coverage: Animalia
Known to Contain Types: True
Living Time Period: Holocene [or Subatlantic?]
Physical Location: http://www.ncsu.edu
Primary Grouping Principle: Taxonomic
Primary Purpose: Research [but also Voucher and Education; can I add more than one?]
Related Material: [maybe our haiku contest should go here!]
Related Collection: [probably need to list here the collections we absorbed, e.g., the NCDA reference collection and others]
Specimen Preservation Method: Pinned [but also Fluid preserved, Slide mount, Cryopreserved, Glycerin, SEM stub; can I add more than one? I think so...]
Taxon Coverage: Arthropoda
Temporal Coverage: 1890-present
Access Conditions: http://insectmuseum.org/policies.php
Usage Conditions: http://insectmuseum.org/policies.php
IPR Statements: [note to self: think more about a statement on intellectual property rights]

Institution

Institution Identifier: http://www.ncsu.edu/
Name: North Carolina State University
Unit Name: Department of Entomology
Contact: http://entomology.ncsu.edu/
Type: University

Contact Details

Name: Andrew R. Deans
Family Name: Deans
Given Name: Andrew
Job Title: assistant professor
Role: director
Institution Name: North Carolina State University
Institution Unit: Department of Entomology
Post Office Box: 7613
Local Area name: Raleigh (I guess?)
Regional Name: North Carolina (I guess?)
Postcode or ZIP code: 20695-7613
Country Name: United States of America
Telephone Number: +1-919-515-3595
Fax Number: +1-919-515-7746
Email Address: andy_deans@ncsu.edu
URL: http://insectmuseum.org/
Logo URL: [we should probably design a logo!]


That's my first attempt, and the exercise got me thinking about a few things - how we should describe ourselves, why we need to profile our collections, and whether we need a formal policy on intellectual property rights. I'm sure the University covers that last one, but I must confess that I haven't read the policy. All in all I don't think I have any criticisms of this standard in its current state. I'll have to see what the hard core standards gurus have to say...