The malacology collection of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest in the western United States and the third largest in the country. Its representation of the Eastern Pacific marine fauna is the most complete in existence and has been used by all modern workers studying the region. Additionally, the collection is strong in small-sized species worldwide and has significant holdings of non-marine mollusks. Previous awards have allowed the collection to begin computerizing its holdings. Locality data from a total of nearly 8,000 stations from fully documented expedition sources have been standardized and entered into the computer. The current project has five major objectives: 1) Expansion and rearrangement of the marine reference collection to integrate the three regional collections into a single systematically- arranged collection. 2) Curation of the newly acquired collection of Recent mollusks from the University of California at Los Angeles. 3) Curation of a large survey collection made off southern California under the auspices of the Bureau of Land Management. 4) Computer entry of data for specimens in the type collection. 5) Continuation of support for visiting investigators who will examine and re-arrange portions of the collection.
