bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The National Collection of Arachnida, South Africa: Making the Collection more Accessible
Authors: Marais Petro , Menyatso Maggie , Lyle Robin , Chiloane Simangele 
Published: June 2018

The National Collection of Arachnida (NCA) was established in 1976 at the Agricultural Research Council – Plant Health &amp; Protection (ARC-PHP) in Pretoria, South Africa. This collection forms part of South Africa’s National Assets, which the ARC manages and maintains on behalf of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The specimen holdings of the NCA contain a wealth of associated taxonomic, biological and geographical information. Currently the collection is managed by a dedicated collection manager responsible for the day-to-day running of the collection assisted by one research assistant. It is utilized for various research activities and knowledge generation in the fields of agriculture and natural resource management. The specimens are preserved using 75% alcohol and held in a double vial method in order to maximize protection of the specimens against evaporation and breakage. Hand-written catalogue books are still used to record and allocate a unique NCA – AcAT number for each specimen. This number links to all primary data recorded for the specimen. Furthermore, the data associated with the specimens are digitized according to Darwin-Core guidelines in an Structured Query Language (SQL) relational database. The database was developed by the ARC-Information Technology services.
The entire NCA presently houses approximately 77,780 catalogue entries representing more than 233,300 specimens from six Arachnida orders. The NCA is made up mainly of reference specimens, but also has a type specimen collection of newly described species.
The type collection currently contains 1,018 type specimens representing 321 species in 136 genera and 42 families. Of these, 207 specimens are holotypes. The type collection is housed separately from the reference collection and was recently moved to a newly acquired fireproof cabinet. Further planned activities include taking photos of all type specimens using a Zeiss V.16 Zoom microscope so that all type holdings are fully digitized. This will allow the implementation of an electronic loans system. Updating of the types list in the collection will facilitate availability for the wider community.
The NCA provides support for key services such as the identification of arachnid predators that have an impact on agricultural production and bio-security as well as a specimen identification and advisory service to government, farmers, industry, researchers, students and the public. These services are essential for research projects on biosystematics and relevant related fields such as conservation, decision-making, agriculture and natural resource management.
Implementing 'Museum Victoria Wireless Input System for EMu (MVWISE)' Barcoding for Location Management of a Wet Type Collection
Authors: Rowley Chris , Taylor Joanne 
Published: June 2018

The Non-Arthropod Wet Type Collection consists of approximately 1660 lots of specimens spread across 13 phyla. The collection covers a range of taxa including Annelida (earthworms, leeches, bristle worms); Echinodermata (sea stars, brittle stars, sea cucumbers); Mollusca (snails, octopus, squid, cuttlefish); Porifera (sponges); Cnidaria (anemones, hydroids). The majority of specimens in the collection are preserved in 70% ethanol or 10% formalin.
Being a collection of zoological type specimens, this collection is considered to be of high scientific value and is irreplaceable. Concerns over possible deterioration and a lack of documented history of preservation, led the Museums Victoria Marine Invertebrate Section and Conservation Department to undertake an audit to assess and document the current state of the collection. The aim of the assessment was to:
establish baseline data covering the physical condition of specimens, jars and seals.
assess the chemical properties of the preservation fluid.
where required, undertake appropriate preventative and remedial treatment.
data gathered from the audit will be loaded onto the museum’s database (EMu).
As part of the audit, implementation of a storage location management system using Museums Victoria Wireless Input System for EMu (MVWISE) was incorporated into the project. Storage location management using MVWISE ensures that object and container records have their current Location updated in EMu when they are physically moved. Implementing object barcoding in a collection that is preserved in fluid where specimens are tiny and stored in vials is problematic. We report on the strategy used to overcome these issues without compromising the best practice for fluid preserved specimens. Advantages of barcoding the fluid preserved specimens of the Invertebrate Type Collection at Museums Victoria include the ability to easily audit the collection even when the taxonomic nomenclature has changed.
Exploring Skeletal Preparation Techniques: Recuration of Botswana Mammals from a 1969 Expedition Using TergazymeTM
Authors: Selvey Hannah , Doll Andrew , Stephenson Jeff 
Published: June 2018

We explored the efficiency of TergazymeTM bone cleaning techniques to recurate mammalian skeletal material from a 1969 expedition to Botswana, in Southern Africa. Mr. J.D. Putnam and colleagues shot and killed over 400 specimens during this expedition, bringing them back as trophies. These skeletal materials and skins of these specimens have remained in the collections at Denver Museum of Nature and Science (DMNS), after haphazard preparation with pesticides such as dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) and negligent soft tissue removal. Many of the skulls and post-cranial materials are coated with dessicated muscle and other connective tissues, including cartilage around the turbinate bones, and most of the soft tissue remains on the surface of the hard palate. These materials continue to emit noxious fumes permeating even the protective archival plastic and cardboard within which they had been temporarily stored. Recuration of these specimens needs to consider the safety of the preparator and other volunteers, and the fragile state of skull and post-cranial materials in DDT for nearly five decades.
TergazymeTM is a concentrated detergent used to remove protein and other biological tissues from medical instruments (Alconox, Inc. 2006). This detergent isauthorized by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), biodegradable, and uses a protease enzyme from the bacterial organism Bacillus licheniformis, which produces enzymes commonly used for industrial purposes. Though TergazymeTM is widely used at a dilution of 1:100, for cleaning medical instruments, we found that an aqueous solution with smaller dilution factors combined with heat and manual agitation (using a stirring rod or other circulating tool) was able to soften the tough dessicated tissues from skulls and post-cranial materials of many different specimens. We removed elements from the macerating solution approximately every two to five days (depending on size) and used dental tools and brushes, rinsing with water, to complete the cleaning of the bones. Throughout the summer of 2017, we cleaned and recurated osteological materials from a dozen specimens, including the groups Acinonyx, Crocuta, Genetta, Hyaena, Ichneumia, Lycaon, Panthera, and Proteles. Besides the benefit of making these materials available and safe for researchers to use, this project revealed pre-mortem bone pathologies in a lion Panthera leo that were previously invisible under dessicated flesh. In addition to their physical availability, digital before and after images will be made available via collection management information system, Arctos. Discoveries such as these can also be compared to more recent specimens for longitudinal pathological studies.
Containing the Spirits: Lessons learned from the Management of Australasian Herbarium Wet Collections.
Authors: Collins Bronwyn , Zich Frank , Palmer Jo , Brown Gill , Knight Karina , Schönberger Ines , James Shelley , Toms Emma 
Published: June 2018

Several herbaria in Australia and New Zealand have recently been required to implement changes to the way in which spirit (alcohol or wet) specimens are managed in their institutions in order to deal with various curatorial and staff health and safety challenges. We will present an overview of some of the key lessons learned from addressing issues such as mould, FAA (formalin-acetic acid and alcohol solution), inadequate housing and storage of our spirit specimens whilst also ensuring that best-practice curation standards are implemented along with appropriate work health and safety practices to protect staff.
For example, the National Herbarium of New South Wales spirit collection was stored until 2017 in metal filing cabinets and open wooden shelving. Due to unstable air-conditioning resulting in high humidity and condensation, mould had formed on all of the bottles and on all wooden surfaces. The external surface of each bottle was cleaned with prior to removal from the dedicated spirit collection room, the wooden shelving was replaced with open metal shelving, and room cleaned and resealed prior to return of the collection. Monitoring of the environment and condition of the collection continues, and future actions include replacing the specimen vials, many of which have failing lids.
The Western Australian Herbarium recently renovated its spirit storage area from specimens stored in boxes on fixed open shelving to individual bottles filed in metal drawers. Health and safety concerns for staff handling heavy boxes, often up ladders, combined with the inflexible and inefficient use of space on fixed shelving are now solved. Plenty of space is available for specimen expansion, and the ease of access to each specimen makes the collection simple to maintain. The next step for the collection is to protect it better by implementing climate control.
FAA was used as a fixative and preservative for plant fruit, flowers and other parts pre-1992 at the Australian National Herbarium in Canberra and the Australian Tropical Herbarium in Cairns. In response to changes in the Hazardous Substance classification for Formaldehyde a program was developed that focused on worker safety during replacement of the solution in approximately 15,000 bottles by minimising exposure and managing the manual handling risks of the work, whilst also ensuring best-practice curatorial outcomes for the specimens.
This is a presentation on behalf of the Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC), a network of herbarium Collection Managers in Australia and New Zealand.
Overcoming the Tyranny of Distance: Revealing Type Collections Down-Under.
Authors: Blom Wilma 
Published: June 2018

Auckland Museum’s Natural Science collections contain several thousands of biological primary types, some dating back to well over a 100 years.
Biological type specimens are important for the recognition of new species, because they are the specimens on which species names and descriptions are based, and so they are the standards against which all potentially new species are measured. As by definition there can only ever be one primary type for each species, these are the unique specimens with highest scientific value.
Fun fact one: More than almost any other country, New Zealand has a very high percentage of endemic fauna and flora, which means species that are found nowhere else.
Fun fact two: In New Zealand we only know about 50% of our biodiversity, which means half of all our species are yet to be discovered and described.
Therefore, our type collections are actively growing as more and more species are discovered and more and more type specimens are lodged in our collections. Because they are unique, types are of great interest to researchers. However, because of our remote position on the globemany researchers request loans of our type specimens rather than travel the long distance to Auckland. Although such practices were common in the past, we, like many other modern natural history institutions no longer allow the loan of many of these unique items. The risk of damage or loss en route to the recipient and back is considered too great. However, it is a disservice to science not to make types available for study.
So in 2008 we launched a project to digitise our type collections. This talk will focus on how high resolution images of our primary types, and their online publication, has removed much of the need for loans and thereby lessened the risks to these important specimens. At the same time it has made our type collections more visible and accessible to a much greater audience.
Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC): A MARK of Curation Excellence
Authors: Jobson Peter , Birch Joanne , Brown Gillian , Bruhl Jeremy J. , Cave Lyn , Hemmings Frank , Hirst Sarah , James Shelley , Knight Karina , Kusabs Antony , Milne Pina , Schonberger Ines , Zich Frank 
Published: June 2018

Managers of Australasian Herbarium Collections (MAHC) is a sub-committee of the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) and provides advice and recommendations pertaining to the management of herbarium collections. It was formed in 2009 based initially on Australian herbaria, and later incorporated New Zealand herbaria. MAHC currently has 18 member institutions representing both government funded, and university based herbaria, and includes both the largest (National Herbarium of Victoria - MEL) and smallest collections (Macquarie University - MQU) in the region. The group meets in person annually, and holds regular conference phone calls throughout the year.
MAHC has proved itself to be a very cohesive committee, despite time, sizing, staffing, and funding differences. It prides itself in being inclusive, cooperative, collegiate, collaborative and supportive. It has a strong mentor approach toward early career collections managers or those new to collections management. The group has a healthy forward planning outlook, developing, promoting and implementing collections management policy, recommendations, guidelines and standards. This cohesion has resulted in a toolkit of resources that are freely available and strives for a unified world class best practice herbarium curation. Some of these universally agreed tools include templates, biosecurity documents, disaster mitigation and preparation for Nagoya Protocol implementation for Australia and New Zealand.
MAHC supports new international initiatives and manages the day to day running of programmes such as the Global Plants Initiative project imaging all vascular type specimens housed in Australasia. MAHC collaborates with CHAH and the data sub-committee, HISCOM (Herbarium Information Systems Committee), for continued improvements in sharing digital data and specimens via the Australasian Virtual Herbarium (AVH https://avh.chah.org.au/) and Atlas of Living Australia (ALA https://www.ala.org.au/) services.
This talk will use examples to highlight the effectiveness and success of a unified group in: developing standard practice in curation, incorporating improved curation procedures, and its ability to be agile, responding to incidents at an international level.
Current State of Collections Management Strategies, Standards and Procedures in the Entomology Department at the Durban Natural Science Museum, South Africa
Authors: Govender Natasha 
Published: June 2018

The Durban Natural Science Museum (DNSM) is located in the city of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Its entomology collection is one of three main collections at the museum. The collection consists of 141,000 dried specimens and encompasses 25 of the 29 known insect orders. Most of the specimens originate from South Africa however there is also a small percentage which has international origins. Collection growth is perpetuated by field collection trips and donations.
In the recent past, DNSM was afforded the opportunity, through the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) via the Natural History Collections (NHC) Funding Instrument, to digitise insect type specimens and move the entomology research database from Microsoft Access to the web-based data management system, Specify 7. These developments have improved accessibility to the collection especially by those who do not have direct contact and access to the collection.
In preparation for the migration to Specify 7, the specimen data was cleaned and standardised by means of an open source online tool, OpenRefine. The tool enabled the analysis and correction of data using an automated process which allowed for maximum productivity. Henceforth, we will ensure that the errors encountered during the data cleaning process will not be repeated. This will be achieved by training data capturers on correct formatting standards and using pick lists in the new database management system to foster consistency.
On-going collections care is a core component of the DNSM, however a collections management policy is lacking and therefore such procedures differ somewhat across the three core departments. With regards to the entomology department, temperature and humidity monitoring efforts and mould prevention, detection and collection recovery occur regularly. Durban is a coastal city, and the characteristic high humidity is of great concern because it facilitates mould development on the specimens. Regular monitoring procedures mitigate such outbreaks.
The DNSM has joined South Africa’s newly launched Natural Science Collections Facility (NSCF) which is a network of institutions which maintain zoological, botanical and paleontological collections. The NSCF, in consultation with institution representatives, has initiated the development of a collections management policy document which will be adopted by the DNSM as one of its sub-policies once it has been passed. The Durban Natural Science Museum will continue to strive for international best practises in collections management.
Image Recognition to Enhance the Value of Collections
Authors: Caspers Max 
Published: June 2018

Techniques for image recognition through machine learning have advanced rapidly over recent years and applications using this technique are becoming increasingly common.. Applications using image recognition have enormous potential not only for research, education, conservation and capacity-building but certainly also for collections management. Perhaps by now an even bigger challenge than the technological one is supplying content in the form of large amounts of validated images. With an estimated 44 million objects, the collection of Naturalis Biodiversity Center has plenty of physical source material.
During a five-year digitization programme (2010–2015) at Naturalis, 4.4 million herbarium sheets were imaged and since the start of the “Butterflies in Bags” project, 50,000 papered butterflies (out of more than 500,000) have been digitized and photographed by volunteers in a standardized manner. Still there are large parts of our collection that are not digitized at specimen level, let alone imaged, but hold great potential for collections work. This poster presents a workflow for efficient scanning of insect drawers and automated segmentation of those images to “feed” deep learning-based image recognition with images of individual insects. It will also demonstrate how this will aid in enhancing the value of our collections.
With proper expert validation early on in the process, the software could mature and become more independent in such a way that ultimately, it could be used by non-specialist professionals to identify the majority of common species. The technique would pinpoint anomalies based on self-learned patterns, both in unidentified and in already identified specimens, and link those back to the taxonomic specialist. Not only does image recognition aid taxonomy, it may also hold potential for conservation and management by, for example, detecting damaged specimens or managing space utilization of drawers.
Pyrite Rehousing – Recent Case Studies at Two Australian Museums
Authors: Teare Sheldon , Measday Danielle 
Published: June 2018

Two major collecting institutions in Australia, the Australian Museum (Sydney) and Museums Victoria (Melbourne), are currently undertaking large-scale anoxic rehousing projects in their collections to control conservation issues caused by pyrite oxidation. This paper will highlight the successes and challenges of the rehousing projects at both institutions, which have collaborated on developing strategies to mitigate loss to their collections.
In 2017, Museums Victoria Conservation undertook a survey with an Oxybaby M+ Gas Analyser to assess the oxygen levels in all their existing anoxic microclimates before launching a program to replace failed microclimates and expand the number of specimens housed in anoxic storage. This project included a literature review of current conservation materials and techniques associated with anoxic storage, and informed the selection of the RP System oxygen scavenger and Escal Neo barrier film from Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company as the best-practice products to use for this application.
Conservation at the Australian Museum in Sydney was notified of wide-scale pyrite decay in the Palaeontology and Mineral collections. It was noted that many of the old high-barrier film enclosures, done more than ten years ago, were showing signs of failing. None of the Palaeontology specimens had ever been placed in microclimates.
After consultation with Museums Victoria and Collection staff, a similar pathway used by Museums Victoria was adopted. Because of the scale of the rehousing project, standardized custom boxes were made, making the construction of hundreds of boxes easier. It is hoped that new products, like the tube-style Escal film, will extend the life of this rehousing project. Enclosures are being tested at the Australian Museum with a digital oxygen meter.
Pyrite rehousing projects highlight the loss of Collection materials and data brought about by the inherent properties of some specimens. The steps undertaken to mitigate or reduce the levels of corrosion are linked to the preservation of both the specimens and the data kept with them (paper labels).
These projects benefited from the collaboration of Natural Sciences conservators in Australia with Geosciences collections staff. Natural Science is a relatively recent specialization for the Australian conservation profession and it is important to build resources and capacity for conservators to care for these collections. This applied knowledge has already been passed on to other regions in Australia.