CSBR: Natural History: Enhancing paleontology collections in coordination with a new Burke Museum facility

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An award is made to the University of Washington to support the Burke Museum paleontology collection. The Burke's paleontology collection includes approximately 3 million objects, but a substantial number of these are not easily accessible to the public or even to researchers and scholars because they are currently housed offsite at a variety of locations. A primary goal of this project will be to bring together all of these offsite collections into a new facility. The new Burke Museum building will maximize accessibility to the collections, as well as to provide the best environment, with modern temperature and humidity controls (not available at some of the current offsite facilities). In addition, the design of the new building features labs and collections facilities visible to the public as well as two classrooms, which will further enhance the accessibility of the paleontology collections to the general public and students at the University of Washington.The Burke Museum consolidation of three collections form three offsite storage facilities will offer increased safety for the fossils and enhanced accessibility and potential for research and instructional use. As currently housed, the paleontology collections are severely compressed and the space available for research-related growth is limited. Recent 5-year growth rates for the three main collections (invertebrate paleontology 3%, paleobotany 46%, and vertebrate paleontology 20%) demonstrate remarkable productivity from the ongoing research of the PIs, their students, and other Burke-associated researchers. Funds from this award will be used for storage equipment, primarily cabinets and open-shelving units, to assure sufficient space for continued productivity. As a university-based natural history museum, the Burke places great importance on training future paleontologists in a museum environment. Undergraduate and graduate students will be employed throughout the proposed collections improvement project, giving them greater insight into how collections are created, maintained, and used.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.