50 YEARS LATER: THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF ACCESSIONING A FORGOTTEN EARLY PALEOZOIC COLLECTION

For the last two years, the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) has been working on an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)-funded project involving the rehousing, curation, and web-mobilization of our Cambrian and Ordovician (~541 to 445 mya) marine invertebrate collections. While this collection records one of the most important intervals in life’s history, potentially providing insight into early animal evolution and the rapid diversification of life in the oceans, it has been virtually untouched and unstudied since the early 1970’s. Before the project began, about 70% of the specimens only had their locality and species data written on a mix of 50-to-90 year old acidic paper scraps, newspaper, and brown paper bags, many of which were in danger of being lost without a backup digital record. Specimens were also still housed for the most part in the field tins and bags they were collected in, thus also at risk for deterioration. As the majority of these fossils and their related data were inaccessible to both researchers and the public, the digitization of this collection provides access for the first time since the majority of these specimens were collected in the 1960’s. This presentation will discuss the progress and challenges of accessioning and digitizing this historical and scientific collection in an effort to increase the integration and accessibility of the collections and associated data for both research and educational purposes.