A Tribute to our Collections Volunteers - Thank You!

by Jaleigh Pier and Vicky Wang

Last updated May 5, 2020

In honor of Volunteer Appreciation Week recently, we wanted to take the time to say thank you to all the amazing individuals who donate their time to the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI) on a regular basis. PRI has a strong volunteer base involved in all aspects of the organization: they are animal caretakers, museum docents, specimen preparators, and so much more. PRI could not do everything that we do without them.

Being Collections Assistants, we especially wanted to highlight the essential but often unseen work of volunteers in the Collections Department. PRI has one of the largest invertebrate paleontological collections in the United States. However, with over 7 million specimens and only a small group of full-time staff, we rely on our volunteers to help us care for and digitize the collections, including work on grant-funded projects. Before we closed due to COVID-19, our department had ten or so volunteers who collectively gave us an average of 60 hours every week.

Collections volunteers are tasked with projects that range from the painstakingly minute (putting microfossils in new vials) to the monumental (re-boxing and arranging specimens within thousands of drawers). Most projects take months or even years to complete, yet many of our volunteers are invested in their work and committed to seeing large projects through to the end. For one of our current grant projects (EPICC; Eastern Pacific Invertebrate Communities of the Cenozoic), volunteer Bill Klose has identified more than 8,000 trays of specimens over the course of four years. He hopes to finish the last 500-600 trays flagged for this project once volunteers are allowed back in the Collections.

Find out how Collections is working from home on this project here!

In our day-to-day operations, volunteers also help with many tasks: taking inventory of specimens, moving dusty boxes and slabs, pulling and packing specimens for outgoing research loans, and opening up thousands of carefully packed specimens (often individually wrapped!) from recent donations. Leslie Skibinski, PRI’s Collections Manager, describes our volunteers as “a very special group of people. Some have been volunteering for decades and others have just started. They have given us hours of service and have helped us in myriad ways for which we are truly grateful.”

During Volunteer Appreciation Week, we reached out the Collections volunteers to ask how they got involved with PRI and to share some of their experiences. It is now our pleasure to introduce you to a few of the wonderful people who volunteer in the PRI Collections, some of whom are still volunteering from home, even though PRI is currently closed.

David

David Regenspan is a recent addition to the Collections volunteer crew, starting in January of 2020. Growing up he had an amateur’s interest in both fossils and shells, and PRI has turned out to be an ideal environment to further pursue these interests. Traditionally, Collections volunteers contribute to hands-on projects, and David started out helping to organize PRI’s modern mollusk collection. He shares, “I have most enjoyed helping to order the modern shell collections and being able to take a close look at shells from all corners of the Earth.”

That project is now on hiatus as PRI has been closed for several weeks due to the state-wide lockdown, but that hasn’t stopped David from contributing to ongoing projects. At home, David is helping transcribe specimen lists and research laws on cultural heritage. “I saw no reason not to keep volunteering at PRI despite the shutdown of the facilities during this crisis. Since I am marooned at home most of the time like many others, this is of great benefit to me.”

Larry

Larry Jensen has been a member of PRI since 2003, but it wasn’t until after retiring from his own career that he began volunteering for Collections. Especially for the past several years, he volunteers essentially full-time for us. “In 2011, I was one of a group of people invited for a behind-the-scenes tour of the collections, and with that, I was hooked!”

As collections go digital, knowledge of databases and the online world has become an important part of collections work. Following a career as a software engineer, Larry has become an integral member of our digitization team. He spent a few years helping import data (including almost 30,000 specimen records) from our old specimen database into our new database called Specify. Since then, his main project involves entering new specimen and locality records into the database from our ever-growing stockpile.

Larry also is still volunteering from home. “I’ve done a little work on verifying taxonomic names of fossil specimens, but mostly I’ve been working on specimens I have collected myself, which will be donated to PRI when the crisis is over.”

Cathy

Cathy Whalen got involved with PRI in 2007, while her daughter Verity Whalen served as PRI’s Collection Database Manager. “I have worked on many projects over the years and enjoy the variety of tasks,” says Cathy. “One project that was especially fun was the curation of the Chemung mastodon where we had to handle each bone. It was both fascinating and humbling to be able to touch the bones of a creature that lived so very long ago.”

Along with another long-time volunteer, Pat Charwat, one of Cathy’s greatest contributions has been the re-boxing and physical reorganization of major parts of the Research Collection, including the Type and Figured Collection, the Zinmeister Antarctic Collection, and the fossil mollusk collection. This past fall, Cathy began to re-box the modern mollusk collection, rehousing specimens and labels (some from a century ago) in acid-free archival boxes. Earlier this year, Cathy arranged to work on various transcription projects at home while recovering from knee surgery, which she continues to do during the shutdown.

Nikki

Some of our volunteers donate their time to more than one department at PRI. The last volunteer we want to highlight is Nikki Chase who started volunteering in the Collections Department in 2019. Nikki additionally volunteers in the Museum of the Earth at the Fossil and Prep Labs, and also helps with hands-on learning through PRI’s KDT (Kids Discover the Trail) program. "What I like best about PRI,” Nikki says, “is the people I work with and being submersed in science.”

Asked what she likes about volunteering at PRI, Nikki responded, “I love being part of something that interests me surrounded by an environment and people that have similar interests. In the Fossil Lab, I love seeing kid's faces (and adults) light up when they find a fossil and are interested in the science. I enjoy sharing what I know about fossils with anyone who wants to listen. In Collections, I love being part of the team, whether it's sorting out gastropods (snails) or photographing different fossils from around the world, every day is interesting and it's been fascinating to see how a collections department works. I haven't been in the Prep Lab for very long but I have always been fascinated by watching a fossil emerge from its matrix during the prepping process. I am excited to be able to have the opportunity to learn and to get more experience with prepping fossils.”

We would like to send a huge heartfelt THANK YOU to each and every one of our volunteers. Although only a few are mentioned here, we would not be able to accomplish everything we do without all of their commitments to PRI.

Leslie adds, “Whether during this crisis or just every day, you are GREAT! We want to express our sincere appreciation to our past and present Volunteers. THANK YOU. We could not do it without you.”

We hope to welcome all our volunteers back as soon as circumstances allow, but in the meantime, we wish everyone to be safe and stay well!