Although the most obvious benefit of our recent National Science Foundation grant is the installation of compactors to the North Collection room this grant also came with support to help curate some groups in serious need. For the NSF grant we are focusing on our Odonata collection and our nest collection. For the odonates we are updating the taxonomy, rehousing them, databasing all the collection information, and giving each specimen a unique CUIC barcode. Checkout these before and after photos of some dragonflies before updated curation on the left and the ones on the right that have been rehoused and updated. 
For the nest collection, which is largely made up of our gall collection and our Hymenoptera nests we are carefully moving them to archival housing and also databasing them and adding unique CUIC barcodes to each specimen. As you can see from the photo our gall collection was previously housed in very old newspapers on the left and we are moving them to proper acid-free botanical sheets on the right. Check out the very small CUIC barcode on the bottom left of each sheet once we rehouse them.
As you can see from the two photos these are significant improvements to our important scientific collections. These will not only ensure our specimens are available to scientists for another 152 years, but also that they are easier to use the next time any of you come by!
