1. How (and How Not) to Survey a Systematic Invertebrate Paleontology Collection for Locality Data Paul Mayer Invertebrate Paleontology Collections Manager Field Museum of Natural History

9. The Problem

11. Methods

12. Results

16. Field Museum of Natural History Department of Geology Collections

17. Dangers

19. B- 2.7

20. D 1.0

21. Walker Collection 725,000 specimens 1964

22. Collection Survey and Map I Started January, 2008 Third week asked for statistics on size and volume of collection. My main goal is to learn what is in the collections.

23. Field Museum Geology Department Collection Size

24. White, R. D. and W. D. Allmon. 2000. Guidelines for the Management and Curation of Invertebrate Fossil Collection. The Paleontological Society Special Publication v. 10, p. 3, table 2. 2000 Paleontological Society Survey

25. 150 cabinets sampled 8 people, April 2001 to October 2002 2001 - 2002 Collection Manager Survey

26. What is in the collection? Quick survey of collection – Several hours –Cabinet by cabinet

29. A more complete survey 546 cabinets –Drawer by drawer (over 13,000 drawers) Four to five months Opportunity to see collections Curation level Size Maps

31. GradeDescription 0.0 No Data 1.0 Stratigraphic and.Locality Data 2.0 Sorted by Phylum 3.0 Cataloged and Identified 4.0 Digitized and on WWW

32. How to display data? Lots of data collected (546 pages) Maps –Displays lots of information –Allows for quick comparisons –Easy to see patterns –Record of the collection

35. Summary Benefits of a drawer by drawer survey –Understand collection –See problems and their extent –Snapshot of collection –Easy to generate maps. Future work: expand accessibility of collection –Cataloging –Digitizing –Photographing