COLLABORATION IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS: COMMUNITY ALLIANCES THAT FURTHER COLLECTIONS-BASED INITIATIVES

Museum collections today are challenged with large historical backlogs, low staff and resources, and sizeable, often digital-based initiatives. Gaining intellectual control of a collection is a primary focus for most museums, though cataloguing and digitizing specimens/objects is mainly a matter of having enough time and resources to complete these tasks. Given the size of most museum collections, these tasks can be daunting and take decades to complete, if ever.

The Cincinnati Museum Center Invertebrate Paleontology collections are uniquely poised to take advantage of long-standing professional and amateur relationships to further collections-based initiatives. A collaborative relationship between the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Museum Center has resulted in the development of a graduate level museum curation class that provides students with curation experience and credit, and the collections with additional staff. A strong community awareness of the value of regional geological and paleontological resources provides volunteers, both in the collections and on the museum floor, from the longest-running amateur paleontological society, the Dry Dredgers. Fostering these relationships has been crucial for the implementation and development of several important collections initiatives, and has resulted in 92% of the Invertebrate Paleontology collection being catalogued.