Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Emily Braker (emily.braker@colorado.edu)
Received: 15 Apr 2018 | Published: 04 Jul 2018
© 2018 Emily Braker
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Braker E (2018) Jar-by-Jar: Curation Improvements to the Herpetology Collection at CUMNH. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e25853. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.25853
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The University of Colorado Museum of Natural History (CUMNH) Herpetology Collection is comprised of over 65,000 fluid-preserved specimens representing over 2,500 taxa from more than 70 countries. Despite its active use, a history of irregular topping up schedules and a decades-long dearth in rehousing projects due to budgetary constraints left the collection in substandard conditions. A 2015 survey of roughly 10% of the collection revealed average ethanol concentrations far below desired levels, with only 15% of specimen jars surveyed containing optimal preservative strengths of 70% (+/- 2.5%). In Fall 2017, CUMNH secured an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to holistically address shortcomings in the micro- and macro-storage environments within the Herpetology Collection. Program activities include jar-by-jar ethanol remediation using a digital density meter and a topping up algorithm proposed by
Herpetology, Fluid Collections, Curation, Topping Up, IMLS
Emily Braker