Preserved fish  specimens.

Caring for the NMNH’s 124 million biological, geological and anthropological objects and specimens is a monumental task.  Thorough, accurate and complete information about the collections’ preservation status  is critical to planning for and ensuring the appropriate care of each different type of collection, be they invertebrates preserved in fluid-filled jars, dried mammal skins, pressed plants, a Triceratops leg bone, historic photographs of  Native Americans, or African musical instruments made from wood, plant fibers and hide.  Collections managers need to know where to focus their work, how to assign staff, what supplies to purchase, which groupings of the collections could benefit from new funding, whether the arrangement of the storage containers is adequate for the anticipated growth of parts of the collections, what projects to assign to volunteers, etc.

The article that follows was presented at a poster session given at the Third Conference on Partnership Opportunities for Federally-Associated Collections, held November 13 - 17, 2000, in Austin, Texas.  The poster was written by William Moser, Karen Reed, and Cheryl Bright, and explains how the pilot of the NMNH Collections Profiling System was done in the Department of Invertebrate Zoology.  The authors’ findings have helped to raise the awareness among collections professionals of the need for such assessments.  The NMNH model is being implemented by other collections - holding organizations around the country.

Database and Scoring Data

A collections profile spreadsheet application was created in Microsoft Excel to record indicator data. With MS Excel, we could rapidly pre-populate data fields (using the fill handle), minimize input  errors by predefining acceptable values (using database validation tables) and easily create charts and graphs (using Pivot Tables) to analyze the data. An MS Access application linked to the MS Excel database allowed us to generate tier/case/row location cards,  profile unit labels and various reports including shelf locator lists for specific taxa.

As many data fields as possible were pre-populated before scoring the individual Profile Units. Data capture was done in teams of two with one individual scanning and scoring the Profile Units and the other person entering the scores directly into the MS Excel spreadsheet on a laptop computer. This saved a significant amount of time compared to the alternative process of completing datasheets and entering the data later. To maintain data consistency, we identified a “core team” (Cheryl Bright, Bill Moser, Karen Reed) who would work on all of the profile projects. A fourth person, typically a specialist in the collection being profiled, joined the core team for specific projects.

From Profiling Indicators to the Results,
 with some cool graphs along the way
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