Abstract

As many informal science institutions are preparing to reopen to the public, it is essential that biological artifact (biofact) collections remain active and adapt to changes related to COVID-19. As a McCullough Fellow, I worked with my community partner, the Western North Carolina (WNC) Nature Center, to determine more resilient methods of biofact collection management and use in education programs. Project goals included the following: understanding staff and volunteer use of biofacts, creating a digital catalog of specimens in the biofact collection, and updating standard operating procedures (SOPs) for specimen sanitation and digitization. I created a survey to document staff and volunteer interactions with biological specimens to complete a comprehensive analysis of the perceptions and use of the biofact collection. I researched common collection management practices for sanitation and digitization to design new SOPs for the nature center’s biofact collection. These SOPs can also be applied to biofact collections at other informal science institutions. The findings from this project are expected to strengthen the accessibility of the biological artifact collection as well as provide the WNC Nature Center’s Education Department with recommendations on the future use of the specimens.

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