Museum of Northern Arizona

The Museum of Northern Arizona will undertake a project to address a high priority preservation need of its botany collection. The project has two primary goals: to physically and intellectually preserve and secure uncataloged specimen holdings, and to achieve intellectual control over a herbarium collection that does not yet align with current taxonomic order. Project activities include: reorganizing the herbarium to ensure that specimens are organized by current taxonomy and nomenclature; cataloging 3,544 botany specimens and entering that information in the museum's database; adding data to the Southwest Environmental Information Network; relocating newly cataloged botany specimens to permanent storage; and conducting a test imaging project on a select sample of botany holdings using recently developed digital guidelines and procedures. Completion of these activities will make the collections more accessible for researchers, and the staff will have greater intellectual control.