A New Facility for the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates: Moving, Compactors, and Cases

Cornell Univ - State: Awds Made Prior May 2010, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project partially supports the move of the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates (CUMV) to a new museum facility in a building currently under construction at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (CLO). Cornell has raised over $6M (out of a total project cost of about $32M) for the new museum space in this building, which is on schedule for occupation in 2003. NSF Funds will be used to: (1) purchase compact shelving and cases for storage of both fluid-preserved specimens and dry specimens (skins, skeletons, nests, and eggs) of vertebrates (fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and (2) provide partial funding for moving the collections into the new facility. This move will be the largest single enhancement to the CUMV in more than three decades: the new home for the Museum will relieve crowding of specimens, allow expansion space and safeguard the collections against a variety of problems related to the deterioration of the current facility. The new museum will also include a state-of-the art preparation facility, large teaching laboratory, radiography room, preparation lab, dermestid room, walk-in freezer, and molecular laboratory. The CUMV is an active university research museum of national importance. Students and staff are actively engaged in original research, and students are trained in curatorial techniques while they help disseminate the information in the Museum to scientists and wildlife managers throughout the globe. The CUMV contains one of the most comprehensive collections of fish, birds and mammals from the Northeastern United States, and its holdings are widely representative of the diversity of vertebrates throughout the world. Museum specimens are irreplaceable sources of data documenting changes in ecological conditions, both through the identity of specimens collected from pristine localities before alteration by humans, and through the tissues that specimens contain, which provide a biochemical window into the genetics of historical populations as well as the levels of pollutants their environments once contained. These collections thus provide measures of baseline conditions and, through continued accessions, on-going monitoring of the effects of environmental changes. Staff of the CUMV will collaborate with the large community of vertebrate biologists at the Laboratory of Ornithology to increase the information stored in and interpreted from the Museum's collections, and to disseminate the knowledge attained through the variety of web and media outlets.