From Plant Press, Vol. 1, No. 4, July 1998.
Each year some 25 thousand specimens are accessioned into the existing 4.5 million collections of the Smithsonian’s National Herbarium. Storage space in the herbarium is already at a premium—new specimens fill approximately 20 new cabinets each year—a serious concern for one of the world’s largest herbaria, whose mandate includes acting as a repository for plant collections throughout the United States and the world.
This year, collection space in about one tenth of the herbarium was increased by approximately one third by the installation of the first phase of compactors. “This is the most important thing to happen to our collections since they were first formed 150 years ago, second only to moving them from the Castle to this location,” said John Kress, department chairman and curator.
Compactors provide additional space by reducing the number of aisles that would otherwise take up herbarium space. Existing storage cabinets are loaded onto wheeled carriages, which move side-to-side on steel tracks. The rows of cabinets rest close to one another when not in use and can be accessed by pushing a button to open an aisle. Two aisles out of a possible seven can be accessed at any one time.
The need for additional space has been a departmental concern since 1985, when limitations to long-term collection storage prompted a preliminary study of the problem. At that time, it was thought that the floors could not withstand the weight of compactors and additional specimens and cabinets, and thoughts of internal expansion were shelved. Curator Warren Wagner resurrected the issue as department chairman in 1995. “Over the last decade or so, not only were we out of storage space, but we were continually eliminating work space in the herbarium by taking half-high cases [on which specimens could be examined or sorted] and replacing them with full-high cases,” Wagner said. He appointed a working group to investigate the issue.
One possible solution involved splitting the collections by transferring a portion of them to a satellite facility, the Museum Support Center, in Suitland, Maryland. But, as David Lellinger, a curator and member of the working group explained, “What we found out when we were thinking about the various possibilities of splitting the collection is that no split would yield a significant amount of expansion to make it worthwhile. There was nothing to do that was at all logical to alleviate the crowding except to get more space.”
Internal expansion involved major funding concerns that still remain with the department. The Department of Botany pieced together a total of $460 thousand. A Smithsonian research equipment request for $140 thousand provided initial funding to start this first phase of compactors, and the remainder was obtained from the director’s office and a significant amount of Botany trust funds. This was enough to install two full compactor bays, which will be completed in July 1998. A third bay will be installed within a year.
Prior to construction, several issues surfaced for Lellinger, Linda Hollenberg, Deborah Bell, and Wagner, the core working group. For example, the low ceilings made it impossible to use standard lighting above the aisles, so Lellinger designed special low-profile lights to attach to the cabinets. Asbestos was known to occur in the floor tiles and mastic that had to be drilled to anchor the compactor tracks; this required special drilling techniques to prevent release of the fibers into the environment. The sprinkler system had to be rebuilt to work effectively with the compactors. There were clearance problems with electrical conduit and ductwork. During construction, changes had to be made in the design and materials used in the raised floor between the compactor tracks for fire safety and differences in cabinet heights caused problems with installing the lights. Each problem added more money, time, and research than originally planned.
“We were fortunate,” said Wagner. “We had a group of people who could and were willing to plow through each one of these issues until we got to the best possible solution. It’s certainly not what they were hired or trained to do. If we didn’t have the knowledge, ability, and ingenuity in-house, we would have had to hire out, which would have cost even more and taken even more time.” He added that the National Herbarium is one of the last major United States herbaria to implement a compactor system.
Despite all the work and the rewards, the project is far from over. The remaining collections are still tightly compressed in storage cabinets. “When we say these compactors are going to give us 25% expansion, everybody thinks, well, that’s 1% a year—it’s good for 25 years—but we have used up half of that expansion just decompressing the specimens that were crammed into the pigeon holes,” Lellinger said.
The Department plans to build an additional six bays of compactors on the fourth floor, bringing the total to nine, plus nine bays on the fifth floor. “Once fully compactorized, at the present rate of growth of the collections, it would take four decades to fill the existing space,” Bell said. With an anticipated price tag of an additional $3.9 million needed to complete the project in the next seven years, the tireless working group is taking a short break to enjoy their accomplishments before they push on to the next phase of the project.
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