[Taxacom] CAS herbarium plans

[Rabeler, Richard]

To: Herbarium Curators and Collections Managers

 

As many of you know, the California Academy of Sciences herbarium
(CAS/DS) has been operating in temporary facilities since 2004.  Late in
2007 we will begin preparations to move the collections to our new
building in Golden Gate Park.  The move will take place some time during
the first half of 2008.  At this time we anticipate that the herbarium
collections will be entirely inaccessible for roughly 2-3 months, and
parts of the collection may be inaccessible for longer than that.  In
addition our ability to fill loan requests will be somewhat curtailed
(or at least slowed) for some period both before and after the move.

 

The CAS/DS herbarium will occupy five separate "rooms" in our new
museum.  Therefore it will be essential to make plans as to how to split
the collections well in advance of moving day, so accurate information
about what we have outstanding is my primary goal at this point.  I can
make estimates from our loan paperwork, but I may be contacting some of
you if I have questions about how much space some of the larger loans
are currently occupying at your institutions.

 

We are also EXTEMELY short-staffed at this point, so if you or anyone at
your institution has a loan of specimens from us, and is planning to
return it within the next year or so, it would aid us immensely if we
could get those loans back far enough in advance to get them filed back
in to the collections.  Conversely, if you or any of your students are
planning to request that loans be sent to you any time before mid-2008
it might be a good time to think about getting those loan requests to
us.

 

If the building plans go as scheduled (and they are at this point), I
will be putting a moratorium on outgoing loans and asking you not to
send any return loans beginning probably sometime next fall or early
winter. More specific information as it becomes available.

 

The new California Academy should be a show-piece, so we hope you all
can pay a visit after we open in late 2008!!

 

And, please excuse the cross postings to list serves.

 

Dr. Debra Trock

Collections Manager, CAS/DS Herbarium