Archiving the History of Life: High-Density Storage to Solve Space Needs for an Invertebrate Paleontology Research and Teaching Collection

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A grant has been awarded to The Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at the University of Kansas for rehousing the Invertebrate fossils and microfossil collections. These fossil collections help to provide the principal basis for our understanding of past life and are useful in the exploration for petroleum reserves, coal, and mineral resources. The collection is integral to the program in paleontology at the University of Kansas. It consists of some 850,000 specimens from all parts of the world including more than 6,500 type or figured specimens that have been studied during the past 120 years. No space is available, however, to expand the collection. To alleviate crowding and provide space for expanding the collections, we will install a state-of-the-art, high-density storage system. The new storage system will comprise manual, mobile compactors that accommodate the existing cases and provide space for new storage cases, ultimately significantly expanding the division's collection capacity. This cost-effective, collection-improvement project will alleviate critical crowding of the collection and solve serious problems that stem from that crowding. Alleviating crowding will enable us to expand our collections, to house properly valuable research and teaching collections now in our possession, and to adopt orphaned collections that mesh with our long-term goals of teaching, research, and public service. Achieving these goals will enable us to develop both the breadth and depth of our collections, thereby enhancing their global impact on research, education, and public service.