CSBR: Natural History Collections: Unlocking the Fossil Cabinet: Improving Conservation and Accessibility of Invertebrate Paleontology Collections at the Natural History Museum of

洛杉矶县自然历史博物馆(NHM)被授予一个奖项，该奖项将支持无脊椎动物古生物收藏(LACMIP)中保存的标本和数据的策展、数字化和可访问性，并具有三个独特和重要的目标。首先，上新世-更新世时代化石的历史收藏需要广泛的实物收藏，以便纳入正在进行的编目和成像倡议。其次，来自加利福尼亚州的大量白垩纪化石收藏将首次得到适当的管理和数字化。第三，在这些藏品中有一个重要的私人收藏，由LACMIP获得的白垩纪和中新世时代的化石，这些化石将得到管理，并向研究人员开放。一旦妥善安置、编目和拍照，所有这三个收藏都将为了解美国西部过去的气候、生物地理和环境变化提供重要的参考标本。该项目还将使一个项目继续发展，该项目为来自附近服务不足的大学和社区学院的学生实习生以及来自当地学校的STEM教育工作者提供实践培训。最终，超过120万个标本的物理管理得到了改进，15.6万个标本记录和1300张图像的增加将使这些收藏更容易获得，并对研究有用。将从这个奖项中受益的收藏涵盖了加州过去9000万年的地质历史、环境变化和进化的大部分，包括大多数主要无脊椎动物群体的代表。这一奖项将确保这些藏品的未来，增加它们的物理和数字可访问性，并首次使它们公开用于教学、研究和推广。在19世纪70年代至30年代收集的110多万件上新世-更新世化石将被转移到档案托盘和小瓶中，以允许它们的数字化。在过去的80年里，从加利福尼亚州收集的近12.6万块白垩纪化石将经历重大的策展改进，包括重新安置、编目和数字成像。从当地中新世和白垩纪岩石中收集的约30,000件标本和相关的地层数据将被拆开，放在新的柜子里，存放在档案材料中，并进行数字化。这些藏品数字化所产生的所有数据将在KE-EMU中存档，KE-EMU是一个藏品管理系统，整合了NHM的所有生物、历史和人类学藏品。标本记录和数字图像也将完全并入现有的数据网络(如iDigBio、GBIF和PBDB)。该项目将向公众提供这些重要的收藏品，从而刺激研究和教育资源。由此产生的数据将大大增加关于东太平洋白垩纪、中新世、上新世和更新世无脊椎动物生物多样性的可获取信息。这些数据填补了一个现有的空白，将对古生物学家和软体动物学家在环境和气候变化、生物地理学和古生态学以及系统和分子生物学家的研究中具有广泛的研究价值。标本记录和图像将可在LACMIP在线门户网站(集锦.nhm.org)和推进生物多样性收藏数字化国家资源(www.idigBio.org)上查阅。

An award is made to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) that will support the curation, digitization, and accessibility of specimens and data held in the Invertebrate Paleontology Collection (LACMIP), with three distinct and essential ojbectives. First, historic collections of Pliocene-Pleistocene age fossils require extensive physical curation in order to be incorporated into an ongoing cataloguing and imaging initiative. Second, extensive collections of Cretaceous fossils from California will be properly curated and digitized for the first time. Third, within these holdings is an important private collection of Cretaceous and Miocene age fossils acquired by LACMIP, which will be curated and made accessible to researchers. Once properly housed, catalogued and photographed, all three collections will provide critical reference specimens for understanding past climatic, biogeographic, and environmental changes in the Western United States. The project will also allow continued growth of a program that provides hands-on training of student interns from nearby under-served universities and community colleges and STEM educators from local schools. Ultimately, the physical curation of more than 1.2 million specimens are improved, and the addition of 156,000 specimen records and 1,300 images will make the collections more accessible and useful for research.The collections that will benefit from this award span much of the last 90 million years of geological history, environmental change, and evolution in California, and include representatives of most major invertebrate groups. This award will secure the future of these collections, increase their physical and digital accessibility, and for the first time, make them publically available for teaching, research, and outreach. More than 1.1 million Pliocene-Pleistocene fossils collected during the 1870s-1930s will be moved to archival trays and vials to permit their digitization. Nearly 126,000 Cretaceous fossils collected from California over the last 80 years will undergo substantial curatorial improvement, including rehousing, cataloguing, and digital imaging. A collection of some 30,000 specimens and associated stratigraphic data assembled from local Miocene and Cretaceous rocks will be unpacked and made accessible in new cabinets, housed in archival materials, and digitized. All data resulting from digitization of these collections will be archived in KE-EMu, a collections management system that integrates all of the NHM's biological, historical, and anthropological collections. Specimen records and digital images will also be fully integrated into existing data networks (e.g., iDigBio, GBIF, and the PBDB). The project will make these significant collections readily available to the public, thus providing a stimulus for research and resources for education. The resulting data will substantially increase accessible information about Cretaceous, Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene invertebrate biodiversity of the Eastern Pacific. Such data fills an existing gap, and will be of broad research value to paleontologists and malacologists in studies of environmental and climatic change, biogeography and paleoecology, and for systematic and molecular biologists. Specimen records and images will be discoverable from the LACMIP on-line portal (collections.nhm.org) and the national resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (www.idigbio.org).