Keep Calm and Organize the Herbarium

It's been very eventful couple of weeks around here! Since the Botany 2012 conference our main goals are: organize, organize and organize!

Here at the CMC Herbarium we have a total of 20 cabinets that are reserved for our collection and 12 that are reserved for research. However, we had many research specimens that were in our collection cabinets and vice-versa. So, this week we worked on putting the research specimens and in the research cabinets and we did the same for the collection specimens.

Note that after a research is completed, the specimens will be returned to the collection and the loan specimens will be returned to their respective Herbaria.

However, before filling back the collection specimens we have to figure out in which cabinet they have to go in. So, we temporaly store them into a "Need to Filed" cabinet in which each cubbie represents a collection cabinet.

To be filled cabinet

Cubbie reserved for specimens that belong in Cabinet 11

This way we can separate all the specimens that need to be filled first and then we work on filling them into the main collection by individual cabinet!

Ashli and I are also working on accessioning many specimens there were left unaccessioned. Accessioning means assigning a number to each specimen of an herbarium. This provides a permanent reference for each specimen of the collection. Often times when a specimen is used on a research, the accession number has to be cited in the publication. Therefore, it is crucial that all herbarium specimens have a accession number and that there are never 2 specimens with the same number.

First we stamp the specimen (preferentially on the upper right corner of the sheet) with our CMC stamper, and then we stamp the number with a automatic numbering stamper.

CMC Herbarium Stamper (left) & Automatic Numbering Stamper (right)

After we are done accessioning for the day, we enter the first and last accessioning numbers on acession book, so we keep track of the numbers used and how many specimens were accessioned in a day.

Acession Book

Ashli has been working extensively on acessioning, while I figure out plant families for specimens that lack that information on their labels so she can accession them later!

Ashli working on accessioning specimens!

Myself helping out Ashli!

There is a lot to do in here and so in order not to get overhelmed, I have an advice for everyone that is currently working on planning on working in here :)

Thanks for reading!

Emilie