The Need for Permit Management within Biodiversity Collection Management Systems to Digitally Track Legal Compliance Documentation and Increase Transparency About Origins and Uses

A growing number of domestic and international legal issues are confronting biodiversity collections, which require immediate access to information documenting the legal aspects of specimen ownership and restrictions regarding use. The Nagoya Protocol, which entered into force in 2014, established a legal framework for access and benefit-sharing of genetic resources and has notable implications for collecting, researchers working with specimens, and biodiversity collections. Herein, we discuss how this international protocol mandates operating changes within US biodiversity collections. Given the new legal landscape, it is clear that digital solutions for tracking records at all stages of a specimen's life cycle are needed. We outline how the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) has made changes to its procedures and museum-wide database, MCZbase (an independent instance of the Arctos collections management system), linking legal compliance documentation to specimens and transactions (i.e., accessions, loans). We used permits, certificates, and agreements associated with MCZ specimens accessioned in 2018 as a means to assess a new module created to track compliance documentation, a controlled vocabulary categorizing these documents, and the automatic linkages established among documentation, specimens, and transactions. While the emphasis of this work was a single year test case, its successful implementation may be informative to policies and collection management systems at other institutions.

Comparing Methods of Determining Formalin Concentration in Fluid Preservatives

Formalin (3.7% weight/weight [w/w], 4% weight/volume [w/v] aqueous formaldehyde) is commonly used as a fixative to prevent postmortem changes in the tissues of a specimen. The specimen is then either maintained in formalin or transferred to another fluid preservative, such as ethanol or isopropanol, for long-term preservation. Residual formalin often remains in the preservation fluid. As formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, it is important to know the concentration present in preservation fluids. A titration method has been developed to determine formalin concentration in fluid preservatives. It utilizes sodium sulfite to react with formaldehyde in solution. An adjustable, repeating pipette and a digital titrator allow for the rapid determination of formalin concentrations in small samples (<1 ml). This method of titration is compared with three commercially available methods of determining formaldehyde and formalin concentration: two brands of formaldehyde test strips, Quantofix® (Machery-Nagel GmbH) and MQuant® (EMD Millipore Corp), and a drop count titration test kit (Hach® formaldehyde test kit, model FM-1). A comparison and evaluation are made on the effectiveness of each method in determining the concentration of formalin in preservation fluids.

Rehydration of Dried-Out Specimens: a New Approach

Different procedures are proposed in the literature for the rehydration of dried-out specimens. These procedures vary greatly in their efficiency and application. This work describes a new procedure that is inspired by the literature but that avoids heating the specimens. This method was applied to reconditioning dried-out specimens from a historical collection (Swiss freshwater fishes, bird brains, and bird eyes), stored at the Naturhistorisches Museum Bern in Switzerland. The procedure consists of five steps. The first step is the softening of hardened soft tissue with benzaldehyde and demineralized water. The second step is an indirect rehydration with water vapor. The third step is a chemically induced direct hydration using a trisodium phosphate solution that allows the specimen to swell in size before being washed with water to remove all additives. Finally, the rehydrated specimen is transferred into new preserving fluid. Because the dehydrating properties of ethanol as a preservative are problematic, this paper presents the results of an experimental case study using a glycerol solution as a preservation fluid.

Characterization of the JAR Sealants in the Fluid Collections of the Muséum National D'histoire Naturelle

Over the centuries, the composition of jar sealants in natural history museum fluid collections has changed but has not been the subject of extensive documentation. Consequently, it is of paramount interest to increase our knowledge of sealant composition as well as to correlate this information with the date of manufacture and type of preparation. As an initial step towards achieving this goal, an analytical protocol was developed to characterize the composition of sealants encountered in fluid collections of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (MNHN) in Paris. Fourier transform-infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy and pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) were used to investigate the nature of selected jar sealants, and these techniques proved to be efficient for the identification and characterization of waxes and resin additives in sealing samples. First results are very promising; similar examinations should be continued on a large scale for an exhaustive analysis of the MNHN fluid collections.

Labels for Eternity: Testing Printed Labels for use in Wet Collections

Will printed labels survive prolonged immersion in collection fluids, and, if so, which printing system is preferable: inkjet, laser, or thermal transfer printing? In a world with a wide variety of printers, printing substrates, and printer technologies, the interactions between them very likely affect long-term label preservation in the chemical environment of the preservation fluid. In fluid-preserved collections, the main issues frequently encountered with labels include delamination, abrasion, fading, and disintegration during immersion in solutions such as ethanol and formaldehyde aqueous solution (widely known under the commercial name formalin). Very few publications have presented testing procedures assessing the behavior and stability of printed matter immersed in the types of solvents used in fluid-based collections. This article presents a series of experiments set up at the National Natural History Collections at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to test a variety of museum labels. The tests compared labels actually used in different natural history collections and included labels from both thermal transfer and inkjet printers. All were subjected to accelerated aging and mechanical abrasion. In our series of tests, inkjet labels gave the best performance.

Conservation-Restoration of a Botanical Museum Fluid Collection: Practice and Research

The collection of the Botanical Museum of the University of Zürich is an academic collection assembled from 1891 to the end of the 20th century (1992 for the last inventoried item). Preserved plants come from all over the world (40 countries) and include all categories of existing Plantae (algae, lichens, fungi, higher plants, bacteriae). The fluid collection, largely neglected since 1976, shows significant degradation. The main problem is loss of preservative fluid due to leakage of the jars and aging of the seals. Another issue is the discoloration of the specimen fluids. These issues led to a research project titled FLUIDIS, which aimed to explore different preservative solutions and their impact on the discoloration of plant specimens. Conservation-restoration work was carried out on the jars of the “Professor Ernst Collection.” Topping up of was necessary for the entire collection. Restoration was performed after opening the containers and identifying the fluid. The specimens were consolidated, repaired, and mounted when necessary, then gradually put back into alcoholic solutions and finally sealed. An overall intervention protocol was established for the treatment of the entire botanical fluid collection. Its application, however, requires a careful study of each specimen.