The Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology and Bohart Museum of Entomology, (both of the University of California, Davis) have been awarded $495,535 from the NSF Biological Research Collections Grant Program. This grant will fund curation needs for the alcohol preserved specimens in their holdings ? nearly 35,000 vertebrates and 200,000 insects. It will assist them by improving specimen preservation, storage, inventory (with new bar-coding system), and databasing. The two museums will work collaboratively in order to reduce duplicative efforts and improve efficiency. Objectives are to improve curation standards, safety, and accessibility to specimens.
Due to their innovative programs, these museums have become valued resources in California (and nationally) and collection use and services have correspondingly advanced. In addition to more traditional uses of museum specimens, they provide broader services including: providing species identification workshops for agency and private biologists; educating students at UC Davis (they support 34 courses on campus reaching over 1,900 students annually); and supporting tours of K-12 students and teachers groups. Combined, their collections are visited by over 10,000 persons each year of which 89% are members of the general public. As a result of broader use, the specimens require a high level of curation and maintenance. Requests for access by researchers remains steady, with an average of 10 publications annually produced using their holdings.
