9407152 Dillon Encyclopedic collections housed in museums continue to be central to modern research in systematic botany. As methods of analysis become more sophisticated, the community's use of well-annotated, systematically and geographically organized voucher collections will continue to expand. The botanical collections at Field Museum include over 2 million flowering plant accessions and represent a sampling of biodiversity with worldwide representation. The bulk of these collections (64.5%) are from Latin American, and particularly Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru and Brazil, and as the pace of biodiversity loss in the Neotropics continues to accelerate, the information provided by these collections is increasingly valuable in conservation efforts. Since its inception, Field Museum's Department of Botany has maintained significant collection-based services to the botanical community. Especially important is a massive loan program with a current volume of 30-40,000 sheets per year in outgoing and incoming material. The selection, repair, packaging, and invoicing of loans is an extremely labor-intensive operation. To insure the uninterrupted and consistently prompt attentions to loan requests from the scientific community. This project will provide a full-time Collections Assistant devoted to assisting with the specimen loan program, including shipping/receiving loans, packing/unpacking loans, fumigating incoming loan material, generating and updating invoices and computer records, filing loans.
