Each year, the department of Invertebrate Zoology (IZ) hosts visitors from across the United States and countries around the globe to study the museum's extensive collections. The support provided by IZ's collections staff, which totals to hundreds of workdays in a year, is critical to maintaining these important research relationships.
An overview of IZ visitors
Some of the most heavily visited collections include the arthropods, cnidaria, and mollusks. Even so, each visit requires extensive preparation, both on the part of the visitor and the collections staff. Before arriving, visitors must fill out a visitor form, which includes a list of all specimens they wish to study, as well as the desired dates of the visit. These forms help the collections staff schedule the visitors, to ensure that sufficient lab space and staff resources are available. (See more about Scientific Visits to IZ.)
Generally, IZ's Museum Support Center (MSC) location accommodates 2-3 visitors per week, most of whom want to see 30-40 specimen lots per day. Numbers of visitors tend to ebb and flow with university breaks, which means that summer is a very busy period in terms of researchers and students coming from institutions within the United States.
The importance of supporting visitors to IZ
Providing support to visiting researchers is an important aspect of IZ's functionality. "It's important to share access, to continue building a culture of sharing and collaboration among research communities," notes museum specialist Karen Reed, who provides regular support to visitors to MSC. "There are a lot of restrictions on mailing specimens now, or some specimens might be too fragile. Additionally, endangered species are subject to other wildlife restrictions, such as CITES."
Karen further notes that many visitors come to IZ because of "sheer volume. NMNH has huge collections that would take some researchers years to reproduce. It saves these researchers time when they can simply come here to study our collection in person."
The personal side of working with visitors
Karen enjoys the vibrancy of the international relationships. She relates how much she enjoys interacting with visitors from all over the world, because it gives her the opportunity to learn more about other cultures and the visitors' home countries.
Karen notes that IZ's visitors come from a lot of different places, many that she would like to visit but, to date, hasn't had the time. That said, the number of researchers visiting from Brazil has increased in recent years. These individuals have won Karen over: Brazil is now part of her must-see travel list.
by Liz Boatman
Comments