A really great Collection Forum paper

was published last month by Amy Davidson and Greg Brown. It is about the practical use of Paraloid B-72 in the paleontology preparation and conservation lab, and is precisely the paper I've been waiting my whole career for someone to write. I'm very glad it was Amy and Greg, this is THE reference that anyone who handles fossils must read. It thoroughly covers methods for application, manipulation, and storage of Paraloid B-72, and provides excellent justification for the selection of B-72 in many paleontological applications.  I've very excited to include this paper as required reading in my Paleontological Laboratory Methods class next semester. Even though I've used this material frequently for more than a decade, I still learned a lot reading their work. There is also another excellent paper in this edition on collections management by some of my UT colleagues. But actually, this post isn't really about these great papers.

I have been waiting to provide a review of "Paraloid B-72: Practical tips for the vertebrate fossil preparator" since I got a sneak peak of the paper in April at the Seattle FPCS meeting during Amy's Paraloid B-72 workshop. My hard copy of Collection Forum arrived in my mailbox in early May, but I wanted to hold off until the PDF was available on the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (www.spnhc.org) website so that I could link to it. Current year PDFs of Collection Forum are only available to SPNHC members, which certainly makes sense as a method for encouraging membership. But as of tonight, the 2011 link is the most recent available. Even so, I wasn't too inclined to gripe about that, until I heard, much to my dismay, that Collections Forum may be going digital only. I hope this isn't true. I realize that $25 is very inexpensive for a membership that includes a journal subscription. But I would be extremely willing to pay more, if this were a question of financial hardship for the organization. For the same reason I still buy CDs and DVDs. Even Bluray discs. I'm a museum professional. I'm astounded that a museum collections organization would abandon paper for an untested technology like PDFs. I'll wager that only one of them will be in an accessible format 300 years from now. Plus, I'm over the age of 19. I can't read long papers on a computer screen. Sadly, when I finally print out that PDF, it likely won't be on archival paper.

The immediate question of access is still an interesting one. I bet the overwhelming majority of people who absolutely need to read this paper are not members of SPNHC. Though they should be. The goals of this organization are worthy, and I want to support them. I have several papers and books in progress right now, and I was sure that SPNHC was the venue for at least some of them, but now I question whether that is true. The goal of authorship is dissemination of information, and while none of our citation rankings are going to be sky high for these topics, if I want my colleagues to have as ready access as possible to my work, I think asking whether Collection Forum is the place for them might yield interesting discussion. At the least, I'd expect PDF author copies for immediate dissemination. Additionally, even though all back issues are available as PDFs, I didn't see it in JSTOR and neither of my institutions have a subscription to Collection Forum. And one of these is a Museum Studies program.

However, by all means be encouraged to join and support SPNHC! Amy and Greg's paper alone is worth the 25 bucks.

Davidson, A. and G. Brown. 2012. Paraloid B-72: Practical tips for the vertebrate fossil preparator. Collection Forum 26(1--2):99-119

Molineux, A. et al. 2012. GIS, the key to collections management of a large research archive. Collection Forum 26(1--2):60-69

6th Annual FPCS

Reposted from the preplist-

The Royal Tyrrell Museum is pleased to announce that we will be hosting the 6th Annual Fossil Preparation and Collections Symposium, in April 2013.  The symposium will take place from April 20 to 22, with a mixer and early registration the evening of April 19th and a tentatively planned full day field trip to Dinosaur Provincial Park April 23rd.

We are in the initial stages of planning, and are actively soliciting ideas from everyone  for workshops you would like to see. We will  be distributing a list of workshop ideas that was generated in-house at the Tyrrell  in the next week or so.

Realizing that it is a long way off yet, it would be great to get a rough idea of attendance to aid in planning. Please let me know via email if you think you can make it.  As planning continues, we will update via the Prep list and also on our web page: www.tyrrellmuseum.com.

Jim


Jim McCabe
Preparation Lab Supervisor
T: 403-823-7707 Ext. 3303 | F: 403-823-7131

Royal Tyrrell Museum
Box 7500, Drumheller, Alberta T0J 0Y0 Canada

Florida Museum of Natural History position

Forwarded from the preplist-

Dear all;

The following 2-year, full-time, fossil preparator position was recently posted. We are seeking a preparator to work on vertebrate fossils from the Panama Canal. The job entails working for periods of time at both the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, FL, and at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama City, Panama.

http://jobs.ufl.edu/postings/30243

Please feel free to contact me with any questions... thanks!

Jason R. Bourque
Senior Preparator
Division of Vertebrate Paleontology
Florida Museum of Natural History
Dickinson Hall, University of Florida
Gainesville, Florida 32611
jbourque@flmnh.ufl.edu

Another Smithsonian job

Reposted from the preplist:

Museum Technician position now open in the Department of Paleobiology, Smithsonian Institution. The position closes on MAY 21.

Duties:
Assists and performs collections management work including conservation, collections facilities and environment, storage, and/or packing and shipping.
* Participates in functions of registration, loans of collections between museums, and information management.
* Uses database management systems to perform quality control to reduce digitizing errors and batch correct errors present in the collections database.
* Using terminology in the scientific field of paleontology, describes and classifies fossil flora and fauna of the world, geologic time, and stratigraphy.
* Assists in the digitizing and imaging of collection data according to the digitization goals established by the Department; assists in generation and preparation of digital specimen images and long-term image management.

1) Open to any US Citizen or US National
Vacancy Announcement #: 12R-JL-297387-DEU-NMNH
Title/Series/Grade: Museum Technician (Geology), GS- 1016 - 5
Location: Washington DC
Organization: NMNH
http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/316069200

This position is open to all U.S. Citizens or U.S. Nationals.

2) Open to current and former Federal employees with permanent status or reinstatement eligibility (see below)
Vacancy Announcement #: 12R-JL-297387-MPA-NMNH
Title/Series/Grade: Museum Technician (Geology), GS- 1016 - 5
Location: Washington DC
Organization: NMNH
http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/316074100

This position is open to current and former Federal employees with permanent status or reinstatement eligibility. Individuals who are eligible for a special appointing authority may also apply; such as applicants with a disability, former Peace Corps volunteers, certain military spouses, veterans seeking a VRA/VEOA appointment, or veterans who have been separated from armed forces under honorable conditions after 3 years or more of continuous active service.

R.T. Bird Excavating tracks

This is awesome. Thanks Youtube.

Very successful FPCS 5!

 

Having begun my recovery (and finished my taxes) from the fantastic meeting at the Burke Museum that wrapped up on Sunday, I'd like to say a huge thanks to Christian Sidor, Bruce Crowley, and especially Jessica Cima for hosting and organizing this terrific event. Thanks are due also to the wonderful slate of speakers who presented on a wide variety of topics. Vendors and field trip hosts opened our eyes to some new technologies and methods for caring for fossils, the weather was perfect, and the venue was well suited to our crowd. This was another meeting filled with international colleagues, new ideas, and fantastic conversation.

The venue for the 2013 is still being worked out, but it will be cohosted as the Annual Meeting of the Association for Methods and Materials in Paleontology. More on this will follow as information becomes available!

Modern fossils

This dude is my new hero.