Research collection

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Preparation of a plant for a herbarium

A research collection is called

  • any systematic collection, i.e. collected items or objects for the study of nature or human history
  • as well as the institutions, organizations or sub-organizations that set up, preserve, systematically develop and make usable and accessible. Often these organizations also research the collection themselves.

Important items of research collections are

Important goals of these collections are to make the collected objects tangible and accessible for research, to keep reference objects ready for comparison purposes and to systematize and scientifically name the collected objects ( taxonomy ).

In Germany, describes the German Research Foundation , which promotes research collections, the term scientific collection as follows: "collection of objects that has a cultural and / or scientific value and is compiled to specific thematic priorities." This definition includes scientific display collections and teaching collections with a . In many cases collections naturally serve several purposes, research collections at universities also serve teaching and in individual cases also serve as public collections.

Development

Historically, the collections were first developed using directories, catalogs and index cards, today supplemented by or replaced by databases with information such as scientific description, including illustration, name, location, find circumstances, age of collection, age of find, scientific evaluation, relationships, DNA and isotope analysis results , pollutant analyzes , References, condition of the object, change of ownership and name.

The cataloging is done by the registrar , other museum documentation done by museum curators and historians.

Many collections have additional specialist libraries to support their indexing and processing.

organization

Research collections are maintained in particular at and by museums , in particular natural history museums , botanical gardens , universities and other research institutions. But there are also independent research collections, such as the Munich State Zoological Collection with over 20 million dead animals prepared for research purposes . Authorities such as B. geological state offices or criminal police maintain research collections.

Museums and natural history museums

As operators of research collections, museums differ from pure research collections in that part of the collection is also shown publicly in a permanent collection . Usually only a small fraction of the entire collection is shown. Even in museums with a large exhibition space such as the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago , the objects on display are only a very small part of the over 22 million preserved organisms and other collection objects in the example.

The largest German natural history museum is the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin with over 30 million objects, including 9 million beetles and 275,000 glasses with animals preserved in alcohol.

geology

Special collections:

  • In Germany, the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg has particularly rich geological research collections. This includes 80,000 minerals in the mineralogical collection , 120,000 samples from deposits in the deposit collection, 16,000 rocks in the petrological collection , 114,000 macro- and almost one million microfossils in the fossil collection, 70,000 macro- and over 12,000 microfossils as well as around 15,000 lithostratigraphic or facial Relevant rock samples and around 14,000 specimens and sections in the stratigraphic collection , 30,000 specimens and 30,000 specimens and sections in the fuel geological collection as well as 34,000 objects in the central document collection Lithothek.
  • The IODP / ODP-Kernlager Bremen Core Repository (BCR) (Internationales Bohrkernlager at the University of Bremen ) has a collection of a total of 140 km of drill cores from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program with 190,000 individual pieces, which are stored in a 1,100 m² cold store at 4 ° C be stored.
  • One of the most important geological collections in Europe is the Museum der Erde in Warsaw with over 170,000 minerals, meteorites , fossils and an amber collection .

biology

Live plants and animals that are killed and protected from decay are collected. B. by drying or preparation , but plants, animals, bacteria and viruses are also kept alive.

Plant collections are called a herbarium . Living plants are found in botanical gardens , trees in arboretums , aquariums and sometimes in seed banks , as well as z. B. Algae collected from the Göttingen Collection of Algae Cultures (SAG). Live animals are collected in zoos and aquariums .

The Old Botanical Garden of the University of Göttingen represents a collection of around 17,000 species.

The research collections of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research in Frankfurt am Main with over 22 million natural objects are particularly well-known in Germany . Senckenberg offers the SESAM database for indexing its collections (see web links).

The objects of the German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures are a special collection .

The Macaulay Library is the world's largest archive of animal sounds. It includes more than 175,000 audio recordings of 75 percent of all bird species. There is also an ever increasing number of insect, fish, frog and mammal shots. The video archive contains over 50,000 clips of more than 3,500 types. The library is part of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology of Cornell University .

Definition of the Science Council

The Science Council describes in his recommendations on scientific collections as research infrastructures the term object-based scientific collection as follows: "It differs from a pure collection of things by a certain order, are recognized in the objects for which there is inclusion and exclusion criteria. The order of the objects takes place in a certain space. Scientific collections are also defined by a time component, by their current relevance for scientific research, but also by their potential relevance. The latter focuses on predictable and plausible future usage options. Last but not least, a scientific collection is characterized by the people who deal with it, take care of it in administration or care, and use it scientifically. These determining parameters result in a diverse internal differentiation of scientific collections. ”In many cases, of course, collections serve several purposes, for research at universities and non-university research institutions, for teaching and often as a permanent collection for the public.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.universitaetssammlungen.de/index/arten
  2. ↑ http://www.dnfs.de/seite/die-sammlungen
  3. ↑ http://www.dnfs.de/seite/die-sammlungen
  4. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/mineralogische-sammlung
  5. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/lagerst-tten-sammlung
  6. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/petrologische-sammlung
  7. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/pal-ontologische-sammlung
  8. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/stratigraphische-sammlung
  9. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/brennstoffgeologische-sammlung
  10. ↑ http://tu-freiberg.de/geowsam/lithothek
  11. ↑ http://www.universitaetssammlungen.de/sammlung/787
  12. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.epsag.uni-goettingen.de
  13. ↑ http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/108651.html
  14. ↑ http://wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de/files/3213/7096/3073/WR_EmpfehlerWissSlg2011.pdf

Web links