The Museum and Docent organization is fortunate to have a team of people working on museum collections in our curatorial area. Some of these committee members have been volunteering for a few years, others within the last few months or year. Much of the ongoing work in curatorial has to do with organizing collections that may not have been properly organized in the past — deciding what to keep, what to use as teaching specimens, and what to discard — while sorting and categorizing using the most current reference books we can find in each subject area. We are also in the process of creating professional labels for the front of each cabinet in the curatorial area. The overall goal is to improve the status of the collection for decades into the future. Please visit downstairs and take a look sometime.
Kim Whiteside is committee chair. Kim has prior professional curatorial experience at the San Diego Museum of Natural History, where she worked with fossils, including microfossils. She is getting her master’s degree in phycology, the study of marine algae. She has been instrumental in establishing database methods, and coordinating museum efforts with the existing State Park museum inventory. In addition to chairing our regular meetings and providing professional guidance to the operation as a whole, Kim has taken responsibility for sorting and organizing our herbarium (terrestrial plant specimens), marine algae, and mounted mammal specimens.
Priscilla Akin has a degree in marine invertebrate biology and has done painstaking work with invertebrate shells and other similar specimens. She has checked all names and identification, sorted into current classifications, and made lists and labels of all specimens in that part of the collection. A few of the specimens have been designated for teaching purposes only. Priscilla’s work has also addressed a cabinet full of liquid specimens. These were previously changed from formaldehyde to alcohol, a messy and important job begun by Faylla Chapman, Shirley Stroup, and others, and finished by Kim. They also needed to be reorganized. Some of her work has involved the use of our new dissecting microscope to view details not visible to the naked eye.
Ben and Roz Pollard are going through our extensive rock and mineral collection, most of which was never placed into the state museum inventory. Ben was trained as a mining engineer and worked as a civil engineer. He and Roz work as a team, with Roz ensuring proper documentation of what we have. So far, they have separated out the fossil collection, which fills seven drawers in one full cabinet. We plan to create a fossil exhibit for use in April and the first week of May. They have also separated the "type collection" which was donated by Cal Poly, and includes rock and mineral types from many places well beyond the Central Coast. While going through the collection, they found several bags full of materials which were duplicates and which we don’t need to keep. We are contacting suitable docent groups to move those items out of the collection. The next phase will be to sort all remaining items into minerals and rocks, and the rocks further into the familiar categories of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic, then into sub-categories in the rest of our cabinet space. Ben designed a set of drawer dividers, and Ron Dewey fabricated them. These will improve the sorting and organization of this part of our collection.
Bob Campbell is a retired ophthalmologist with a lifelong interest in entomology, the study of insects. He has been using the microscope to examine our insect specimens and confirm identification. He says that it is often not possible to identify insects to the species level, but only to higher taxonomic levels such as the family. He separated out a sub-collection of insects from Oregon. We have attempted to give these to a facility in Oregon, but so far without success. He also separated out part of the collection that had been severely damaged by other insects. We destroyed that collection, on his recommendation and after approval from then-Superintendent Juvie Ortiz because it had no remaining scientific or educational value, and to prevent the spread of the damaging insects to other parts of the collection. What remains is in surprisingly good condition, considering that much of it dates from the 1960s and '70s. Bob is carefully entering the insect collection into a database, sorting it by family according to the most current reference books available.
Dave Dabritz is working in the area of skulls and bones, which has been his area of interest for most of his docent years. Most of our bone specimens are of mammals, but there are several bird skulls and bones as well. Dave organized a work party to sort that part of the collection into portions that are in excellent condition, those in fair to good condition that can be used as teaching specimens, and those that should be discarded. He has begun sorting the collection by family, again using recent references. We have a few skulls of domestic animals, which will be used for comparison and as a way to relate the anatomy of mammals to our visitors’ experience. Dave has brought in current thinking in cladistics, the study of genetic relationships between lineages of living things. A mammal cladogram has been attached to one of the cabinets, and there are copies available for those who are interested. As with other areas of the collection, Dave is working to compare our records to the state inventory and update our database.
Jerry Kirkhart is a retired zoology professor, active as a walk leader, college presenter, and docent photographer. He and Rouvaishyana have agreed to take on reorganizing the mounted bird collection. Little new work has been done in this area as yet, because both of them are busy with other projects. However, a few years ago we held a work party to organize the bird nests, eggs, wings, and feathers. Several current docents took part in that, and had the opportunity to learn about taxonomy, the science of classification. This reorganization has served as a model for organizing other parts of the collection, especially the marine invertebrate section which is nearing completion at this time.
One benefit of all this work in our collections has been exhibit work. Some of these collections had not been examined since at least the year 2000, and some since earlier than that. In the past few years, the museum has done exhibits on Geology, including the history of mining in SLO County, insects, and whaling, using items salvaged from Montana de Oro during a cleanup of the ranch house, plus whaling implements that had been donated. Bette Bardeen’s concept for Skeleton Sunday came indirectly from this process, because there was increasing awareness among the docent community about what we have in our collections. There are currently teaching specimens in the school docent storage room next to the Learning Center downstairs. A number of our specimens are on display in the museum, at the Spooner Ranch House, and at Pismo Nature Center. Not everything we have is suitable for display, but if you’re looking for a specimen to illustrate your talk or presentation, if you have an idea for a future exhibit, or if you want to help out, please see someone on the committee. We’re also thinking about having the committee do a public presentation or two during the summer.
Go On to State Parks "California Forever" Movie Premiere
