Not sure if anybody has been following this story:
http://gizmodo.com/u...cime-1793745389
I got the following SFC email today but thought I would share it here as well in case anybody is nearby and wants to help out
This email was requested to be forwarded to the SFC membership on behalf of of Tulane University.
As you may have heard, Tulane University and a consortium of regional fish collections proposed a plan to rescue the recently orphaned UL Monroe (ULM) fish collection. The plan involves transferring the entire collection to Tulane, inventorying all of the lots (jars) of specimens in the collection against the ULM database, cataloging roughly 11,000 jars of specimens that were donated to ULM by Louisiana Tech University but never entered into the ULM database, and organizing the lots geographically. Thereafter, parts of ULM fish collection will be dispersed among fish collections at each of the consortium institutions.
As I am sure you can imagine, rescuing and redistributing a collection the size of the ULM fish collection (over 1 million specimens in more than 80,000 lots) is no small feat. We are recruiting volunteers to assist us with the initial stages of this operation during the first few weeks of August. We are contacting you to ask if you are interested in volunteering to help us unpack and inventory to collection during this period.
A professional transportation company is tentatively scheduled to start packing the collection (boxing the jars and packing the boxes onto pallets) for transfer to the Tulane Biodiversity Research Institute (TUBRI) in Belle Chasse on Monday, Aug 7th. We expect trucks to start arriving at TUBRI by Friday, August 11th. If the move happens on this schedule, we will be ready for volunteers starting on Saturday, August 12th. Work unboxing the jars will be confined to Saturdays, and weekdays starting the week of August 14th (no Sundays). We are assuming that many of you will be busy with the start of fall classes the week of August 21st. So, we are not expecting many volunteers after this. However, we will accept help from anyone who is available after August 21st. Lunch will be provided on all work days.
Please contact Hank Bart (hbartjr@tulane.edu) and Justin Mann (jmann@tulane.edu) to let us know if you are available to help us with this important task. We’ve also created an online sign-up form at this link: https://goo.gl/forms/q54BpBozowGzmyLj1. Simply enter your email address, name, institution/organization, check the dates that you are available to help, and submit.
Many thanks in advance and best wishes.
Hank Bart and Justin Mann
Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection
Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute
Directions: http://www.tubri.org.../directions.htm