 Hi everyone we're going to give it just a few minutes to allow the audience to fill the room, but as always you guys are very timely so it's well appreciated by everyone. I'm going to go ahead and get started sharing my screen. I want to welcome everyone to our very first webinar of 2024 CDC care webinar my name is Robin Bauer Kilgo and I'm coming in from just outside Washington DC in Silver Spring Maryland. Before we start I'm going to go over through some introductory slides talk about some tech stuff and then we will go ahead and get into today's program. So you are here today for our first webinar of the year as I said rock on storing your geological materials, we will be here from 1pm Eastern to 2pm Eastern so we're going to be here for about 60 minutes to talk about this subject. As I said my name is Robin Bauer Kilgo I am the CDC care coordinator. I encourage you to email me at c2cc at cultural heritage.org to see if you have any questions about anything with the program or anything we're doing today. I will plug our website at the start of each program. Our website is connecting to collections.org on that website you will see all sorts of fun information, including a history of our program we've been around for over 10 years so you will find quite the archive of webinars, courses, links to our online discussion community which I encourage everyone to go and take a look at, and all of our curated resources so it is there and ready for you to do some research and some digging whenever you're ready. We have two places we live online for social media one is Facebook. The other one is the network formerly known as Twitter, both have the handle at C2C care on both of those pages you'll see announcements for upcoming program so I encourage you to follow both of those. We have a couple of quick technical notes for today's program we have enabled closed captioning so if you hit the CC button at the bottom of your screen, you will be able to see our captioner working hard away which we appreciate their help in our work today. We've also enabled a chat box which is there for technical questions general comments anything that along that line for the actual program itself. Our Q&A box our Q&A box is really there for questions for our speakers. So if you have a question at any point during the webinar, please use that Q&A box I encourage people to use it in there. As compared to the chat box which could be a tiny bit of a stream of consciousness as people are talking. I would also say that if you want to say hello on the chat box you're more than welcome to I was encouraged people say hello and maybe where they're located so the audience can get a feel for it. So today we're in the process of scheduling out 2024. So you'll be seeing announcements about upcoming program very soon but right now we have our one scheduled for weekday, February 29, 2024. It's going to be working with facilities to create a fuller picture of your collection environment. We have speakers coming in from facilities and those who work within the actual collection sphere itself to talk about facilities, monitoring how to set up parallel systems so if you have a situation where maybe there's your operations folks to have their nice environmental monitoring program and you want to set up your own using a third party monitor some kind. It's kind of showing how that sets up and also how to work alongside our facilities colleagues to make sure we're on the same page and it works for a collection environments. So I encourage you to sign up for that program. If you're interested in it. We do do one free webinar a month so that is our February one and you will see the rest of our calendar shortly. So I'm going to go ahead and hand this over to Sally Shelton she is the associate professor and associate chair of the heritage and museum sciences program at the Museum of Texas Tech University she's going to be our speaker today. She's also a member of the CDC care professional groups who helps come up with these topics we're really excited to have her here today to talk about the subject of this geological collections. So Sally feel free to take over whenever you're ready. All right, great. And thank you Robin. Thank you everybody for being here. I've got three different levels of technology here so we'll see if share screen actually works. Can everyone see that is there any interference with that. It looks beautiful so you're welcome to start whenever you're ready. Well again thank you all for being here. I am. As Robin said I'm with the heritage and museum sciences graduate program at Texas Tech and this is this is actually one of my favorite subjects. I will say in advance that you know we have 45 minutes we're going to be hitting some of the high points. And some things if you want to know more about things in depth you know let me know let Robin know. Maybe it will be something to bring up for a future presentation. So, basically our focus today will be on storage as the first and strongest line of collections care and defense for geological collections. We will not talk about our things like archaeological lithics and fossil collections there is some common ground there. But they're also a whole lot of nested issues. And those are almost presentations in themselves so it's important but it's something we won't be getting into today also within situ conservation of geological materials and things like heritage sites. It's not going to be way too complicated to get into today so we're just me focusing on the storage of collections. And if you're not if you have geological materials you're not that familiar with them. And you're concerned about, you know I don't know anything can I do anything right action most geological collections care storage solutions are standard practice and common sense. There are a few approaches that are specialized and I will touch on those. One thing is, you don't necessarily have to know exactly what a geological specimen or object is in order to know how to provide good collections care. But the more you know about something, the more closely you can identify it or understand its characteristics, the better it is to make more tailored storage decisions. And I just want to say upfront that if you're not all that familiar with geological materials and you'd like some help identifying things. There is nobody who is happier to work with you than geologists they love to consult. They love to provide an identification another they'll provide you at least as much information as you want, you know, maybe more. But you don't have to operate you know, with the idea that you know you don't know something and it's unknowable it's very noble and there are lots of people who will help. One of the main problems we have and this this is a recurring theme through a lot of different kinds of geological based collections that I see is a perception problem more than anything else. And I call that the just rocks problem. And geological materials are often under curated under cared for because people simply assume that they are their rocks, nothing ever happens to them they're sturdy. They're changing they're not susceptible to environmental problems. And when we do get support for better storage often it's because it's something that has very high market value, which is something that administrators in the like understand but sometimes that's just increased security without actual improvements to storage. We sometimes have to keep making the case that geological materials need the same kind of storage care as other collections. And very often with geological materials, the problems developed because people are not paying attention we see this especially with things that are deteriorating on exhibit but aren't checked often. And things can deteriorate on exhibit or even in collections until the damage is such a profound state that not a lot can be done. The best quote that I've ever found out and found about this came from DA Allen who was the director of free public museum in Liverpool, and he suggested that the perceived durability of geological materials actually works against their interest. And he had this great line that I really love requiring less attention. They got it. And everything sort of snowball from there so even with new techniques coming in for other natural history collections organic collections things like that. People saw or at least they hope that the rocks and the fossils remain intact and inert, sometimes almost invisible beneath the gently accumulating layers of dust. So a lot of our problem is the just rocks problem and there is no such thing as just rocks. And just want to make that really clear upfront. We're dealing with a huge range of materials, values of rationales for collecting is it for research is it cultural is, you know, many things going on a huge range of risk and values and environmental sensitivities. And your storage solutions need to be planned around the unique factors of each collection that you got and each kind of material that you got even the storage concerns are kind of three fold with storage you know from a physical point of view what is going to best protect your collections and minimize risk, both to the collections and to the users. So documentation, and we're talking about this a little bit more in a minute, how do your documentation in your storage enhance each other, so that information linkages are not lost. And then with handling and access what concerns do you have about access to valuable fragile or hazardous collections, and how do your storage and security approaches mitigate some of these. So from a conservation point of view, material types and so far as possible, it's really good to know what you're what you're dealing with what is its physical nature chemical nature all of that. The size of the collections. I would argue that geological collections can have some of the most unbelievable range of sizes in the physical dimensions of objects because we can go from microscopic to entire sculptures and building structures. The weight of the collections can be extremely high and this is very often a factor with selecting the right storage solution. The size of the collection, depending on where and how things were collected and for what reason the numbers can be, you know, in the thousands to the 10s even hundreds of thousands. So the preservation of that information I was talking about the one to many relations of information between an original specimen and samples that are derived from it. And how does your storage maximize the the loss of risk that we're going to lose those those relations. Environmental sensitivities. Many geological materials actually can be very damaged by environmental factors. So they're risk to the collections that we need to look at mitigating the storage. They're also risk from the collections and we deal with a lot of materials that can be sort of to extremely hazardous. And how do we manage that in storage. How do we manage that for human health and safety. So what do you know if you've got that and what steps you take at that point. And finally one of the big concerns is actually that a lot of the materials we work with have high financial values both legitimate and black market, which means that security concerns are a very real factor in selecting the kind of storage that you're going to use a little basic terminology here we can get into much more complex but this is 45 minutes. The mineral is going to refer to mineral we're talking about a naturally occurring inorganic material with a defined composition and structure. We call it a rock when it's an aggregate of one or more minerals. We call it a gem when it's actually been prepared to an attractive form and use for adornment and meteorites and others rocks of extraterrestrial origin. These are the material types that we run into. And this is this is not this. This is not the total there there are there are many others but again I'm trying to be merciful here. Mineral or mineral oids. Rock slash stone which we'll get into in a second. You can have ores and precious metals. Again gems that are worked as adornment. These are terrestrial materials, and why I'm including lunar samples I'll explain a little bit later on. Biogenic and anthropogenic they're not may not be technically rock but you often find these in collections this can be things like artificial gemstones these can be things like amber mother of pearl things like that they're not again they're not technically rock materials but they're very often in geological collections. You can have any and all of these work desired in cultural objects. You can have cores which are large scientific samples of sediments rocker eyes and in many museums and this was particularly common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And collections of building materials, anything from samples to structures, minerals, minerals, mineral just recognize anywhere from 5000 to 10,000 minerals and each list you come to with this will tell you it's the definitive number. There are a lot about 350 of them are known to be unstable. And there may be more. And getting these accurately identified may involve hand lens sampling testing microscopy and you may not be set up for that. So with unidentified specimens try to locate any contextual information that you might have who collected it, where and when other materials with it. So you need to know the exact mineral you're dealing with which I do recommend it, particularly if it's sensitive. Again, the best strategy is to consult a geologist, because they may be able to help you with with the identification and figuring out what is going on, and what special needs it may have. Question I get a lot is what is the difference between rock and stone the answer is, you'll like this one they're the same thing. As I mentioned are naturally occurring aggregates or masses of minerals, mineral oids, sometimes organic material. Stone is the same thing but in our field it's a term of art used for rock materials that are worked or otherwise encountered in cultural context. So if you see references to stone conservation and you want to know how this relates to the discussion of rocks. Again, this is easy. They're the same thing just different terms to refer to them in different context. So starting small, we can have very small specimens so small that they are permanently mounted on micro slides, and this can be tiny fossils this can be tiny rock grains other samples and things like that. Usually amount is something like a glass micro slide plus some kind of mounting medium and adhesive, in many cases, plus the specimen plus the cover slip. And several people have looked into the conservation of old micro slides because the problem is that the older the mounting medium. This is usually the biggest problem the more likely it is that it's a one of the problematic adhesives or resins that were once in common use, and they do tend to deteriorate over time. So all of the components, including the specimen or the section the slide and the cover slip obviously a very fragile and very brittle. So these merit their own storage, and there are there are a lot of storage solutions for micro slides. You can look up any of a number of Microsoft slide storage cabinets these can be just tabletop these can be very large. And along. In general, I would recommend steel over wood, particularly if you've got reactive and aging adhesives holding down the cover slips, you want as inert a storage environment as you can manage to try to stabilize those. And one thing I see a problem with especially with older slides is the slides are labeled with a glue on or stick on label which of course deteriorates over time. So all slides, slides labeled directly on the glass with the parent specimen number. Don't rely on a glued on paper label because over time, these do tend to fail. Then sections, which you do find in a lot of dedicated research collections. A thin section is literally a slice of a larger specimen. In some cases it's thinner than most cases it's thinner than a sheet of paper. You can put it on a micro slide for examination under both magnification and polarized light as way of analyzing the mineral kind this is one way your geologist figures out what the minerals are in your given section. But as you can see from the picture here they're extremely thin. And they're also mounted on micro slides from a research point of view these can be very important to have. And the information about the parent specimen is lost and the number on the slide is lost. We can have a real problem ever reuniting these with the original specimen or the original subject of research. Micro mounts are very popular in the amateur mineral collector communities these are like single small crystals. They're very small indeed but they large enough that they show the key characteristics of that mineral under magnification. These are fairly inexpensive for a lot of people to put together they're often sold or traded many people in the amateur mineral collector communities have very large collections of these. They tend to be stored in small clear littered acrylic boxes. The little ones you see that are about four centimeters cubed with maybe a magnifying lens in the top. There is no standardized documentation or preparation set in the amateur community for this and they're often donated to museums as is that can be extremely interesting to have. Again we run into problems with deteriorating adhesives and consolidants, the old repairs, and sometimes as happens with a lot of donations of geological materials just a lack of the basic information. When we are looking at the best ways to store geological collections. One of the things one of the running themes through all of it is some kind of padding and some kind of support. Because even though geological specimens appear to be durable, a lot of them are brittle and ironically the bigger they are, the more vulnerable they are if they're stored in such a way that they're basically supporting their own weight. So, close cell archival foam as a padding medium for drawers and trays and boxes and everything else is just kind of a basic, whatever you have whatever system you have, you are best off having some kind of padding. It serves as a layer of protection here in the bag thing that I've got here we have the archival ziplock. When lining it, we would have the specimen on one side of the foam and the label on the other side. And this not only protects the specimen with smaller things it actually facilitates vertical storage in a boxer tray which can be a real space saver, which can be important if you've got a very large collection and a limited amount of space. It can also help with the containment of powdered or fragmentary materials. I do all too often see these in open boxes or trays and aside from the fact that it's not a good way to treat a powdered or fragmented specimen. This also allows for more exposure to tiny particles that could be inhaled and set up problems for the person working with them. It can also use foam padding as a support starting with the base layer of foam and then cut out layers on top to both cushion and support the specimen itself this works very well. If you've got things in boxes. And I always recommend if at all possible that boxes should be littered. It's just another layer of protection. So some of the storage concerns on the other end of the scale. Dealing with heavy weight specimens, whether it's one single large thing or just a very large range of things that add up in weight is one of the biggest problems we deal with with geological collection collections. You do need to look at the strength of your cases and you do not need to overload them it can be a real temptation to do that, especially when you have a lot of again a lot of material and limited space. But regular steel shelves can and have been the event and even broken by overloading. We tend to think it's sort of like the just rocks problem we tend to think of steel shelves as being you know, able to absorb an infinite amount of material and unfortunately that's just not true. Basically, and this is another running theme geological collections objects should not be stacked or piled on other objects in storage. Even if their box stacking should be kept to an absolute minimum and I essentially if at all possible I do not recommend it. Heavy objects are, you know, and this is part that a lot of people you will talk to don't understand heavy objects are often still very brittle. They will break. You can drop and break them you can exert enough force on them to break them. They can be separated from physical damage such as dropping breaking abrasion, things like that. And even the heaviest objects as tempting as it may be because they can be a pain to deal with, but they should never be stored directly on the floor. It makes it more difficult to move them and to work with them. You know, you can set up a problem both for the object and for people if the handling of something trying to get it off the floor is not done well and it's dropped you know on a foot or something like that. So, more about that in just a second. All heavy geological collections objects need padding sufficient padding to do some good padded supports. And this is, you know, something as simple as a palette or something as customized as a plaster or fiberglass jacket, which is used a lot in paleontology. This will distribute the weight, it will prevent slipping and falling, and will ensure safe handling. I recommend palletization of heavy stuff whenever possible. It will be secure securely supported and palletized well enough that you can facilitate moving them shelving them unshelving them by tools such as pallet jacks or forklifts. And heavy objects again should never be stacked on each other and should never support their own weight so even though they're big, and they're heavy. They still need your attention they still need your care and they can still be seriously damaged. And micro storage solutions. You may have to use open storage shelves there may not be a case in the world big enough for what you're dealing with. But with protection plastic sheeting or whatever to ameliorate some of the exposure to dust and other problems. I always recommend pallets and palletizing always recommend know how to use pallet jacks and forklifts. I am not the first museum person who actually had a forklift operator certification for a few years. Padding is always going to be important for the big stuff. Protecting from dust and light. Again, we're trying to keep the information together all parts of this storage system, the specimen the support, the palette, all need to be labeled with the specimen number. Clearly, and in a way that you can't easily remove them or get rid of them so it's always clear which specimen belongs where which support system belongs to the specimen. And as I mentioned before, geological collections are often quite large because with many cases people are or were trying to establish a statistically significant research base so just collecting one of everything would not have been enough. Sometimes you're aware of this because you're in the place where the research was done and all the information is there. Sometimes and I see this a lot. It's new to you because the collection has been donated by the researcher or someone acting on behalf of the researcher and you may not know the history of why this collection was made or why it's so large. It is a very real issue to deal with, particularly in terms of space. It's something to take into account when you're designing space, either when you already have these collections, or when you have been offered collection that is larger than the space you've got available. Even, even with hand samples samples that are, you know, basically the right size to hold in your hand from which a lot of other things are derived. The collection up is not recommended as they still need to be spread out. And they still need to be no more than one deep. In addition to the weight problem when they're just piled up in a big mass. As you can see here many specimens are numbered directly, you know, on the face of the specimen, and any abrasion that you have from piling rocks up in a huge mass may very well abrade that number away. Either way to collect to connect the specimen with its associated information and this can be this can be a real problem. Information linkages with geological collections are worth taking a few minutes to discuss. Because this this can be one of them. How do I want to say this. You may run into this with geological collections more than a lot of others. Because we use geological samples, we use geological specimens I should say for a lot of different kinds of sampling methods. And I call this the one to many connection. You have one parent specimen you have many samples that have been derived from it. This can be many different kinds of samples many different kinds of media used many different kinds of uses. So how do you maintain your documentation in storage, both from labeling and database decisions and all of that to make sure that that connection between the parent specimen and all the derivative preparations and samples. That connection does not get lost, and you can have that exactly many different samples and preparation types from the same parent specimen. There are different ways to approach this one is not better than the other. It depends on your situation, but both need to be planned. You can store it by preparation types such as having them, all of the micro slides together all of the powdered samples together, all of the things that need specialized storage together. So that you have samples from one specimen that are distributed in several different collections storage areas. This is at the linkage to the original specimen, and its data may be lost. You can also have storage where you have the parent specimen and all the samples stored together. So physically, you keep them together and there is no loss of physical association. In that case the concern that you might have is that some of the preparation types that do need special storage may have their needs overlooked. The storage system that would be just fine for the parent specimen may be damaging to some of the sample types derived from it. Again, this is something you have to work out for each individual collection. So but if you've got you know this parent child relationship. Taking the samples is very valuable. This is how we determine what specimens are. This is how we determine their value. This is what happens with good research use. The samples may need to be preserved as vouchers and validation for identification for publication. But again, if the samples have very different storage and conservation needs from the parent specimen. We need to figure out how to manage this so that all samples and everything associated with their original specimen are best cared for and the information linkage is preserved. This of course is one of our main agents of deterioration which is dissociation or you know the loss of either the loss of objects or the loss of the link between the object and it's associated information. The storage system has to include link storage of information, both in your physical aspect of it and in the virtual aspect of it. So, you need to determine if it's more advantageous to store some similar preparations together. This way you can facilitate if you need for example on control temperature on controlled atmospheres which we'll talk about in a second. We need that for the entire collection of specimens needing that protection. And this makes good documentation important to preserve. And if you're putting the parent specimen and the result of preparations together. You need to be sure that some or all of the preparations are not being damaged because they need better storage than the parent specimen does. This is an example of a thin section stored with its parent sample in a very stable environment. This way there is no question of which specimen this particular thin section came from. And the specimen itself is further protected by bagging. So, you're not going to lose a lot of the information on the surface. One thing that should not be stored with geological specimens and we do see this a lot is the actual documentation because for a lot of collectors there was the same fear that we would lose the association. So, very often, especially with older collections you will find that all of this information got stored in the same drawer with the associated specimen. Your documentation needs to have its own storage as you can see here its own solid archival storage things like maps, GPS coordinates, plans from previous collecting trips, field notes, catalogs. All of these things listed here do not need to be stored in the same drawer with the specimens. This was very traditional in the geological field for a long time. These great candidates for scanning, digitizing, associated them with the permanent specimen record, and then putting them in their own safe places that are better designed for archival and documentary needs. So what do we do with collections that are at risk? Some of the usual culprits are here. We have a lot of collections are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, relative humidity. Oxidation is a big one for us. Light exposure, water exposure, physical forces we've touched on a little bit, theft and dissociation. In general, if you keep the ambient temperature stable around 70 to 72 degrees Fahrenheit with as little fluctuation as possible, this is usually good. Temperature fluctuations particularly very high and very low are typically what cause crazing and breakage in specimens. Sulfur based minerals and you know sulfur itself as a mineral will crack if the ambient temperature is too high and that doesn't have to be particularly high. You can hold a specimen and sulfur and watch it crack in your hand. It can be that sensitive to heat. And opals and any specimens that have water inclusions cannot be frozen or overheated, because that does set up irreversible damage. With relative humidity about 50% when it's pretty stable with not a lot of fluctuations is usually good enough except for in some special cases. There's a lot of minerals that are very reactive gypsum will dehydrate to an hydrate. If the sustained relative humidity is too low. Halite, which you might know is rock salt, begins to deal a quest and dissolve and sustain high relative humidity and pirate which will get to in a minute. Did you all think I was going to leave out pirate I'll never leave out pirate pirate is notoriously unstable and high relative humidity. So what we're looking for. If we know that you have something that's environmentally reactive closed steel cases are the best strategy if that is at all possible. That's for both relative humidity for light levels. And bear in mind that if they've already been damaged once by environmental exposure they are more fragile and vulnerable to future reactions. So even if they've been damaged once and you stabilize them. It doesn't mean that they were fixed it means that they are probably even more vulnerable than the regular specimens. Oxidation is reaction of minerals with oxygen. People tend to dismiss that it's always just rust. And now it can actually be one of the most damaging things going on. This specimen war susceptible to weathering and breakdown. Many rocks and minerals containing reactive components are vulnerable to this iron is one of the big culprits in this and very reactive specimens may require micro climate storage with an artificial atmosphere containing no oxygen which we refer to as an oxy or an oxy storage. The artificial atmosphere can be nitrogen carbon dioxide are gone or other inert gases. This this is a you know creating these kinds of micro climates especially an oxyquans has been well covered in several publications it is a complex process and it's not not a perfect one. And you still have to continue monitoring to ensure that the micro atmosphere doesn't pick up oxygen along the way and continues to protect the specimen. I write is notorious for this pirate is an iron sulfide mentioned we've mentioned both iron and sulfur as being vulnerable minerals well here we get them together. But pirate reacts with high relative humidity levels, especially when you have acidic storage conditions, and breaks down to ferro sulfate and sulfur dioxide. If you've got a lot of water as in high RH this converges sulfuric acid. As you can see, the geological curator here, the publication geological curator group which is one of your best friends in geological conservation, did a whole issue on this. Because this problem is so serious. This is what an oxyc storage of a pirate experiment looks like. There are multiple levels. There's an indicating silica gel was humidity indicator. It is effective in slowing down the breakdown reaction is costs intensive supply intensive and still has to be monitored and the system checked and renewed as needed. So sensitivity, this is very often something we see in exhibit situations many minerals are sensitive to both visible light and UV radiation, the brown in this amethyst is light damage, and it's irreversible. And similarly, or permit will do degrade to realgar after prolonged light exposure. And this is just one of the many arguments against using exhibit space as long term storage for geological materials. This should not be kept on permanent exhibit hydrolysis chemical reaction caused by water. Again, we see things converting actually converting from one mineral to another, depending on the associated or the bound water content with this. And this can be very damaging deal of questions. This is this is a nice picture of halite notice it's got very sharp clear cores and edges. And you know that you have inappropriately high levels relative humidity is when you start getting rounding and softening of these edges because the mineral is literally dissolving. And again that that is irreversible. So, just another argument for keeping the relative humidity to the best possible level and it's stable and free of fluctuation as possible. And the air fluorescence, which you see, you know, not just in a typical geological collections but in sculpture and building materials. When you see crystals, this is sometimes called whispering developing on the surface of porous rock and stone materials. This is where water soluble salts rise to a surface and then dehydrate. And the air fluorescence is coming directly from the breakdown of the object itself so it can greatly weaken your materials over time. So in simple forces, we want to prevent as much as possible by storage solution by padding by supporting by keeping things you know out of a situation where they're stored together and stacked together, and by recognizing that that's going to be a problem. If you have very fine crystals like this. Unfortunately, in the amateur community there's been a tradition of wrapping these and things like plastic bags from dry clears as way of protecting them. And it tends to get entangled so does cotton and so do a lot of other inappropriate things. These basically support at the base and then you want them in some kind of box where they're not touching anything. They're not exposed because these are very difficult to deal with and if anything gets entangled. It can actually further a lot of breakage theft is a big problem with geological collections because we have very high market values with a lot of materials predictable ones with gems and precious minerals and things like that. Things you might not expect like extraterrestrial specimens fossils. And other objects. It's kind of a moving target. What is what has high value and what is subject to theft private collectors may be able to give you accurate information about what is hot right now, what people are looking to steal and sell high value objects. I would separate from the main the general collection. A separate room or vault may not be too much having it off site may not be too much. Access should be limited locking steel cases without using interchangeable keys. Do not label the cases and drawers with easily read identifying information and there is a lot of information on this and about how to provide information that you understand but it's not clear to somebody who might be breaking in. Look into alarms and cameras for such an area. Look into a specialized storage for some, some situations we've actually recommended working with somebody like law enforcement to find out about what they're using for forensic and evidentiary collections and these are usually on to lock situations where you have to have two people with a key before they can be opened. These are usually terrestrial collections, normal ones, there are lots of collections of things like meteorites and tech types. Many of these are iron based and they have the sensitivities of all iron based specimens, there was a very high market value. So security and access is another concern. Why I mentioned lunar samples earlier, most of the moon rocks from Apollo 11 and 17 are missing. These are the nations of the world by the Nixon administration and approximately 180 of them are unaccounted for they. They were pilfered they went home with people they simply vanish the ones that are safe for the ones that were always in locked in secure storage black market values at one time for moon rocks ranged up to $5 million if by any reason you think you have one of these. Another general of NASA would really like to hear about it. Risk from the collections. There are a lot of things that put people at risk that you really need to be aware of. General toxicity materials containing arsenic lead and mercury off gassing where we get gaseous emissions such as mercury vapors from Cinnabar and right on. Some things you can risk you with direct skin contact radio activity is one of the big ones and inhalation risk where we have tiny particles that you can breathe in that are not good for you. You need to know you may need to work with a health and safety expert to figure out exactly what you've got they should, everything should be clearly labeled in storage in your database on exhibit cases should have warning signs there should be no question about this. Not the level of containment that is appropriate to minimize chances of accidental content or exposure. Find out what personal protective equipment you may need and follow those guidelines. You may need to isolate hazardous collections apart from the main collections especially if it helps you take care of everything. And if you can't provide that and this is perfectly legitimate if you really can't provide this level of protection, you may want to look at moving your collections transferring them to an institution that is set up to do that. Radio activities one we usually hear about. Not all radioactive risk are the same rate on is actually a fairly normal thing to to deal with. In buildings and basements and places where there are systems to vent the rate on gas to the outside alpha and beta particles are a little more risky but they're easy to contain gamma waves or ionizing radiation. And this requires very serious and dedicated storage and this may be something that you do want to move to another institution. It occurs in weird places. This is a sample of trinitite, which is a glass that was created from the Trinity test site at White Sands. As with you know what happened with lightning it happened with, you know, bomb test. It made a glass a lot of people considered pretty and residents were able to obtain pieces and makes them into jewelry and other souvenirs. And then museum collections. So, even if you're saying well I don't have anything like you know radioactive minerals, sometimes radioactive materials pop up in strange places. But don't guess work with a health and safety expert to determine what the risk are and what enclosure and exposure requirements you have to meet. Listen to what they tell you about this, and do what they say. And make sure that everything is labeled and there's no accidental problem with this. Inhalation when you have something either naturally breaks down into tiny particles that can be inhaled, or it's the process of breaking something down as with you know, having samples and with little tiny particles that are released. All of these things listed here cause these lung conditions that are very serious. So, if there's any chance you're going to be exposed either to the minerals or things released during a preparation process. Again be sure to use personal protective equipment and to protect everybody in the area. So consider a form of visible storage and environmental damage can be really exacerbated there because you've got more fluctuations you've got more visibility. And you're moving things on and off exhibit. Sometimes visitors can you know reach out and touch things exhibit cases can be damaged or broken. And more susceptible to vandalism and theft. A number of museums were hit about 15 years ago by people stealing gold specimens that are on exhibit and museum I worked at at the time was one of them. Because, in large part a lot of these things have been on exhibit for a long, long time people knew exactly where they were and how to get at them. But anything that's out on exhibit is visible and attractive. And is it risk hazardous specimens if your exhibit setup is not sufficiently secured to prevent exposure this can be a very serious problem. And again loss of associated information. We've heard about more than one place where the people setting up the exhibits thought that the labels were unesthetic and actually remove them for the for the duration of the time on exhibit and then they get lost or otherwise the information linkage gets broken. You should not be using exhibits as visible storage for your collections, they should be just as supported on exhibit as they are in collections. If you really need to exhibit things that are highly valuable and highly theftable I don't know if that's a word before but it is now. If you're looking at reinforcing the cases look at barriers and look at keeping the exhibit short and rotating things. Again monitor the environmental parameters, make sure that if you're putting out hazardous specimens. It's in such ways that there won't be exposure. Open exhibit is very often problem not just with hazardous things. Make sure things are labeled. If you have an objection to labeling things as being hazardous on exhibit. They probably should not be on exhibit. So general protocols for collection storage. One of the most powerful things you have is one of the simplest just regular visual inspection of everything and ongoing monitoring and recording of environmental variables. Most things are going to do well and stable environments with well managed environmental conditions. If you know you've got unstable materials you should figure out do they need specialized storage. Same with materials posing known risks that also be targeted for specialized storage. Select cabinets and shelves that can handle the weight of geological collections with the padding and support. Don't stack things. Do manage the environmental conditions. Keep things in the dark they like being in the dark when they're not in use with exceptional environmental sensitivities. Consider specialized storage solutions and there are a lot of people that you can work with given you know what the exact problem is. High security for things with high market value or other theft and vandalism risk really pays off in the long run. Isolation for hazardous specimens will also will pay off and will protect your people in the long run. For those who've collected access collections look at ways to limit the information posted on cabinets and shelves and again always work to maintain information links with all associated materials and their data and all storage solutions. I particularly want to thank Kendra Dean Wallace here at the museum she gave permission for me to use collections and associated specimen photos. I appreciate that. And that's what I've got and I guess now we are open for collected for questions. We are. Thank you so much. I'll also add that Sally put together an amazing resource list for everyone that you can find on our website at the link in the chat. So I would encourage everyone to take a look at that if they want to go over and see this amazing list of resources. You can also get a copy of her presentation there. Thank you so much for coming in I'm going to hit as many as I can and our time remaining. One of them I wanted to point out just because it is a hazardous issue so I think it's good to cover and I'm sure they're not the only person who has to deal with this. Someone says we recently found a sample of liquid mercury in our collection. I can't imagine using it for our educational programs. Good call, and we don't have an in house geologists for research. Someone says should be kept in the collection for any other purpose what is the relevance should be eliminated through a specialized firm. For now we sealed the container it is in a glass container with a twist cap wrapped in bubble wrap and placed it in a box. Definitely don't make it part of your educational collection I would completely agree with that statement. Do you have any other thoughts on this. Put an education collection good idea. Yeah, it sounds like you've taken all the appropriate steps to stabilize and contain it. What is done with it at this point is very much up to you. If it's something you do not want to have its museum again I would consult an environmental health and safety expert. You know, from within your institution or at a municipal or county level there are a lot of people you consult for this. If all you want to do is to get rid of it safely. There are people who will handle that for you. Yeah, agreed. We also have quite a few CDC care webinars about just dealing with hazardous materials and liquid mercury is definitely hazardous material so I would encourage you to take a look at those as well. Someone says we have two specimens of asbestos in basalt in one Christ so Christ child asbestos should I isolate or deaccession. Okay, let me just say this the fact that a specimen is hazardous, I don't think is in and of itself a reason to deaccession. Kind of up to your institution and your particular situation, but if you are going to keep it I would definitely isolate it. Asbestos is something that you know a secure lidded box will prevent exposure will also allow you to handle it safely. So isolating in that sense you don't you don't have to throw it out of the collection if you don't want to. If you simply do not want to keep it around because you feel the risk is too much. That would be when you can consult with with the experts for disposal, but you can easily if assuming that it's you know, not incredibly huge. You can easily box it and continue to keep it safely as long as it's labeled as long as you have good handling procedures. Those clear boxes that I showed are great for this because you don't even have to open the box to do a lot of the visual examination that you may want to do. I just add that if you do consider deaccessioning just make sure deaccessioning is covered in your collection management policy so you'll want to make sure that it's all outlined nicely in there before you start approaching deaccession process. What she said. So someone asked our pests like in moss an issue so we know you talked about some issues that you might see within a collection has have you ever come across like inner moss growing on geological collections by chance. It's not seen like in per se growing after something has been added to a collection sometimes things are collected that have like an on them. It's not really that much of a problem, because they, you know, even the best conditions they tend to be very slow growing. If you have something is growing after something has been added to collections then you may have an issue but sometimes people report that mold is growing on the specimen and it turns out to be an efflorescence. So no, no what you're dealing with first though, most of the pest damage we see is to things like paper labels to get attacked by silverfish. But highlight is very popular with the rodent population and you can find that being not on. Interesting. Hi Sally thank you so much regarding slide and micro slide specimens do you have recommendations on whether these should be stored flat, if possible, rather than vertically with the edges and slots. This is another stacking issue if they can be stored horizontally without being in direct contact with each other. That is probably better in the long run because that way you get gravity on your side instead of working against you. So if it is possible to do like horizontal but with the slots like the system I showed earlier that would that would work. Vertical storage is probably the more popular over time you know historically but you do get the problem if you have those adhesive deteriorating and slipping. Then gravity is actually working against you and you can you can have the whole slide sandwich sort of slip and fall down to the bottom and fall apart. It's a good question I like that one. Good deal. It's, I'm going to do a couple more are you able to hang out for like maybe three or four more minutes is that okay. Yeah. So someone asked if we have minerals that are degraded by low RH like gypsum that have been stored in extremely low RH for decades are those so degraded that we should consider deaccessioning is there a way to measure degradation. I don't know if there is an exact scale of degradation if it is unrecognizable compared to normal what I would call normal minerals are the same kind. If it's reached the point that it's unrecognizable then it's probably not going to be useful for anything and would be a candidate for deaccessioning. If the degradation is kind of early in the process and you can stable you can't undo but you can stabilize. Then I would recommend that but if it's at the point where it's, it can't be undone and it can't be used that's great criteria for deaccessioning right there. Yeah, great. What method of direct marking labeling do you recommend for geological specimens. Are there any methods that should be avoided. There are a lot of methods that should be avoided. There was a tendency when when white out was in popular use to use that because it was easily available, and it also very chips very easily breaks very easily many labels were put on with things like white out or just regular white paint that happened to be on the shelf. If you're labeling the specimens directly. And I noticed Jane list here are Rolex B6D and B72 all of those those are great. Depending it a lot depends on actually the color of the specimens whether you put down basically a white layer to write the number on or you write the number directly on the specimen but in all cases they should have that top coat. And that top coat should not be clear fingernail polish I should put together a list of things not to use on rocks but a white out and clear fingernail polish be right up at the top you've listed some of the very good archival sound substances to use and that's what I would recommend. Yeah, it's don't generally speaking don't use clear nail polish white out or sharpies to label objects in general for all things to avoid. So someone says should type would Tyvek be an appropriate material for dust covers for specimens. Absolutely. I can't recommend it enough because because it's durable because it tends to be entered. And because it's relatively easy to get, especially when you've got large specimens and you've got large storage needs you can get large sheets of Tyvek. And that really helps a lot. Generally speaking Tyvek is a delightful thing. I do know that in some cases a good idea to wash it before you use it that's one little tip I've learned. It's one of the tip sheets on how to use it for our collection of storage so I would recommend you just type in type it Tyvek collection storage and you'll have lots of hours of reading on how to use it. This might be a good kind of final question this says excellent presentation thank you I often get the statement. They're just rocks, sometimes from faculty and curators who are geologists. So some of the tips for effectively communicate to these folks the vulnerability of geological materials. I think part of the problem is that they think about sample preservation on the order of the span of their careers and not long term preservation for a prosperity. That is a wonderful description and I may steal that. Okay I do not recommend using geological materials as projectiles to get the attention of these people, even when it's really really tempting. It's a constant process of education. I would appeal to them from the sense of the importance of the specimens. I would also anytime you find something deteriorating. Make sure to bring it to people's attention make sure to show people that damage can happen. But what I find works with people with, especially with the career kinds of people. There is to appeal to their sense of leaving a good intellectual legacy. And if things are not well cared for and we've seen this over and over where once the person is gone, the collection is unusable. And intellectual their intellectual legacy is compromised that's something they will pay attention to is that this is what you're trying to save. You're trying to save the rocks, you know just for the sake of saving the rocks are also trying to save their intellectual value added. And if they're not treating them well, there may not be that much intellectual value added. So, get get them in the vanity. That's perfect. And there's also a couple questions floating in here. We're not going to be able to get to all the questions they are wonderful but just time wise we won't be able to so I'll make sure to pull the questions and then the Sally so she can take a look at them. But there's quite a few people just talking about handling. I'm asking if we should use gloves if you should use clean dry hands. I'm going to say generically whenever I'm dealing with any collections I wash my hands before I do anything with them. Right. I use gloves dependent on the type but I tend to go more towards my trial gloves and then I always wash my hands after I handle anything and oftentimes I use a lot of mass, especially if something looks like it has a just in general just for regular health and safety. Do you have any comments on that Sally. No, that's perfect that's actually perfect. If you come from the white cotton gloves era. Especially when you're when you're dealing with things like I showed you with the tiny crystals and things like that because they cause more problems than they're worth. But nitrile gloves are good, especially if you don't really know what the specimen is or what it contains if it's something for example like arsenopyrite you really don't want to be handling that directly. If you're absolutely sure that you're not exposing yourself that's one thing but if you're not 100% sure it takes no time to put on a pair of nitrile gloves and protect yourself. Yeah, I mean and I'll say I started my career in the archaeology world so there were many times I was digging up firecrack rock in the field and then ate my sandwich pretty soon. Tell with that rock but now working in the more museum field and just with time and experience I try to keep a general clean hands clean workspace all that kind of fun stuff so I would recommend that here as well. Well, I added again the link to all the resources and our survey I encourage everyone to take our survey if it is possible. We did record today's presentation it will be up on our website and the FA I see what YouTube website probably by the end of the week so I encourage you to take a night for that. Sally huge thank you for this this was such an interesting subject and again like you know when we first proposed it I was kind of like they're just rocks but this has really made me think about like how storage things you can run into so just thank you for your time and effort. Thank you all for being here and thank you Robin. Alright, so we will see you next month on leap day February 29 for our environmental the care spaces webinar and we hope everyone has a great month and as a reminder this program is supported by an IMLS grant and FA I see so we thank them both for sponsoring this program so thanks everyone and we will see you in February.