Curatorial and Facilities Support for the Entomological Collection

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The Insect Collection in the Bernice P. Bishop Museum of Hawaii contains the world's most complete representation from the Pacific Rim. It contains more than 13 million specimens, of which more than 13,000 are type specimens. The collection is surpassed in size only by the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Scott Miller, Chairman of the Gressitt Center for Research in Entomology, proposes continued improvement to the collection, including installation of high-density storage facilities, support for a visiting specialist program, creation of a computerized inventory of the collection, and curation of extensive holdings that await sorting and labelling. The proposed curatorial effort will increase the availability of this collection to investigators from around the world. Museum collections such as this one comprise the primary means of studying the earth's biological diversity. Proper curation and computerization of such natural history collections will offer new insight into the factors that control this diversity.