“VALUE,” WROTE John Ruskin (1862), “is the life-giving power of anything; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it; price, the quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it”. These distinctions see obvious enough. Yet in the bustle of everyday modern life in a highly materialistic society, it seems increasingly difficult to separate “value” from “cost” and “price”. How do we — as individuals, groups, or a society — assign a value to something? What, in fact, do we value? A glance at television or a popular magazine offers some clues. We value things economic, those associated with “making a living”, with solving the everyday problems of making one's way in the world. We value things that enhance our position or status in society, or that make our lives easier or give us pleasure or diversion. We value things that make our lives meaningful. We do not tend to necessarily value what's good for us, at least not simply because someone tells us it is.

INVERTEBRATE and micro-fossil collections vary in size, scope, degree of documentation, quality of curation, purpose, usage, and security. This chapter introduces the main categories of fossil collections and curatorial attention, and documents the sources and uses of invertebrate paleontological materials. The term ‘permanent collection’ is used to describe collections housed in professional collections-care institutions that provide long-term commitment to collection security and curation. Invertebrate fossils include the hardparts (spicules, shells, etc., other body fossils [e.g., impressions, casts, and molds]), tracks, trails, and burrows attributed to invertebrates, and organic molecules. Microfossils, included here for convenience only, include the same kinds of remains of prokaryotes, protists, and tiny invertebrates. This book is the product of an National Science Foundation funded workshop organized to address specific concerns about curatorial practices in invertebrate paleontology. For this reason the focus of this chapter is on invertebrate fossils. Nevertheless, the concepts and uses of collections described below apply directly to paleobotanic specimens, and to most vertebrate fossils.

“ORPHAN” IS AN incongruous word to apply to something dead for millions of years. But there is no better term to describe the state of an invertebrate paleontology collection whose guardian can no longer care for it. The numbers of specimens in invertebrate fossil collections do not set them apart from other natural history collections; however, add weight and volume, and it is obvious why adopting these orphans pose special problems. The workshop coordinators divided the discussion of orphaned collections into those held by industry and governmental agencies (see Allmon, Chapter 4, this volume) and those housed by institutions and individuals addressed here. Topics discussed at this session of the workshop included: the definitions of orphaned and endangered collections, why collections become orphans, which collections are most vulnerable, and what, if anything, can be done to prevent orphaned collections in the future. I have attempted to present an objective report of the discussions and proposed suggestions, but my bias as curator of a collection housed within an academic department may have crept in.

WITHIN BIOLOGY, the consummate synthetic, big-picture science is systematics and the fundamental resource and tool for systematics is natural history collections. Without systematics there is no unifying theme to the study of biology. Without natural history collections there is no systematics. Society and the institutions that house natural history collections must rediscover the value of those collections. These collections are a world treasure, a cultural heritage, an intellectual trust, a societal and institutional responsibility.

Paleontology and paleontological collections contribute uniquely to the sciences of systematics and ecology. They provide the record of change through geological time evidence of the changes in the characteristics of species, changes in ecological associations of biota, and a record of abiotic global and regional climatic change. The study of this historical record allows the identification of the locations of certain sets of conditions from the past, illuminates our understanding of the present, and enables our prediction of future changes on a global scale.

COLLECTIONS OF invertebrate fossils are commonly maintained in museums, at universities, and by individual researchers and interested private collectors. Twenty years ago, the Committee on North American Resources in Invertebrate Paleontology (CONARIP) estimated that there more than 550 institutions housed invertebrate paleontological macro- and micro- fossil collections (Glenister, 1977). Historically, collections have been developed, managed and maintained by paleontologists as a resource for their research (e.g., museum curator or university faculty) (Hebda, 1985). Since the early 1970s, the field of collection management has evolved and the increased professionalization of collection manager positions has been instrumental in improving the management and preservation of invertebrate fossils as well as other natural history collections (Cato, 1991; Simmons, 1993; Simmons, 1995).

PALEONTOLOGICAL collecting, transport of fossil materials, and the ownership of paleontology collections are governed and affected by a wide range of laws and regulations, from land law to bequests. Compliance with all applicable laws can be confusing, especially when a collector has to negotiate Federal, state, local, tribal and international requirements.

Unlike archaeology, paleontology does not have a body of laws specific to fossil protection. Most legal problems in paleontology arise from land access and permission to collect on public lands, theft and trespass concerns, public trust violations, land title and rights, and related issues. In the United States, there are no definitive overarching statutes governing fossil resources per se as separate from other land resources.

ALL MUSEUMS have limited resources, and all acquisitions use some of these resources, whether they be space, money, staff time or materials. When museums purchase collections objects, some “costs” are evident up front, and there are frequently mechanisms in place at a high level to monitor that use of museum resources. For example, in art museums this is often a committee of the board of directors empowered to approve or deny curatorial proposals for major (i.e., expensive) acquisitions. However when the object is “free,” as in most invertebrate paleontology collections where material is either donated or collected in the field by museum staff, the cost of acquiring the object is essentially hidden. Some acquisition costs may be fixed regardless of the size or nature of the acquisition, and some vary depending the amount of space the material will require, or the amount of cleaning or conservation needed.

AS RECENTLY as thirty years ago, deaccessioning was a dirty word in museums. It was considered an abrogation of an institution's fundamental responsibility to care of its collections in the public trust. Miller (1985) has chronicled some of the public controversy that attended deaccessioning in the early 1970's. However, in the intervening time, museums' approach to deaccessioning has changed as they grapple with burgeoning collections, decreasing funding bases, pressure to narrow and focus their missions, and rising standards of care. Now deaccessioning is regarded by the majority as a necessary and appropriate tool in collections management, albeit one that operates within strict ethical and legal constraints.

A museum's collections policy should address criteria for deaccessioning, levels of approval needed, methods of disposition, use of funds resulting from sales, and records keeping. In addition, staff must develop procedures for identifying material for deaccessioning. In the following sections we review the currently accepted standards in the museum field for these areas, as well as discussing how some of these issues apply particularly to paleontological collections. It may be appropriate for paleontology departments to develop guidelines and procedures that further refine the museum's overall collections policy to fit the needs of their collections and the conventions of their field.

MUSEUMS HAVE always disposed of unneeded material, and the practice is an important means to keep collections functional and organized. However, it also is a potentially dangerous activity that should be undertaken only as a last resort and not used as a simple way to make collections management more convenient. This is especially true for catalogued or well-labeled specimens, but even “poorly-documented” specimens may have considerable importance. There are numerous examples of collections that have been damaged and irreplaceable material that has been lost to science through poor disposal choices, regardless of the deaccessioning methods used.

Methodology and guidelines for deaccessioning fossil materials are presented in DeMouthe et al. (this volume). However, they provide limited information about the preliminary work and policies required to properly identify material that can be disposed of safely. The following is a brief summary of some of the important considerations required to reliably determine the soundness and suitability of specimen disposal plans.

THE TERM CONSERVATION refers to the whole subject of the care and treatment of valuable materials. Its definition is two-fold: (1) the control of the environment to minimize the decay of artifacts and materials; and (2) treatment of materials to arrest decay and to stabilize them against further deterioration. Restoration is the continuation of the treatment to return an object without falsification to a state in which it can be displayed (Howie, 1992; series editor's preface). The vast number of specimens in invertebrate paleontology collections makes treatment or restoration impractical or even impossible except for remarkable display specimens. It is possible, however, to control the environment, both physical and procedural, in which collections are maintained. It is easier to prevent deterioration than to fix it once it has occurred. This is the principle of preventive conservation.

There is a general misconception, held by many paleontologists, that there are no conservation concerns with paleontology collections, or, if any, the concerns are minor. This unfortunately is not the case; although fossils and their rock matrix have lasted hundreds of millions of years in the earth, once excavated they are subject to many forces of destruction (Crowther and Collins, 1987). Problems in collections occur as a result of many different factors: inappropriate storage environment; inappropriate application of a “universal” treatment; or unstable materials used in preparation and treatment. Minerals such as pyrite may oxidize; shales crack and delaminate. Prepared specimens may include introduced materials such as consolidants and glues that themselves are subject to deterioration. Research into conservation of natural history materials has grown significantly over the past two decades. This paper will emphasize preventive conservation principles to address some of the conservation concerns particularly relevant to paleontological specimens and suggest some practical ways of reducing the risks to the collections.

PALEONTOLOGICAL data are complex. They involve a wide variety of different classes of information relating physical objects, such as type specimens to all manner of different things including collecting localities, systematic concepts such as a genus, and published statements about stratigraphic or systematic placement. This data model has been designed to describe the structure of information used in invertebrate paleontological museum collections (Appendix IX).

The heart of the data model is the concept of Collections Objects. Collections objects are fossils and other such things that make up the material of invertebrate paleontological museum collections. Collections management involves essentially tracking collections objects and maintaining the data that is associated with collections objects. The key data associated with collections objects are their provenance (where and when they came from) and added value data such as what names, if any, have been applied to them, or what publications they have been illustrated in.

A data model is a formal description of some set of information. It consists of a picture of the main concepts involved (the Entity-Relationship diagram) and a set of formal written documentation that defines these concepts and their relationships with each other. For an introduction to the concepts and symbols of data models see the references below, or good summaries provided in the ASC and PaleoBank models.

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUMS are one of the greatest resources available to paleontologists and evolutionary biologists. Through their exhibits, they have inspired generations of children to become paleontologists, and they also serve as a tremendous repository of realized and potential data. If invertebrate fossils can be thought of as individual data points, in the United States alone there are perhaps 100 million data points. Yet, in spite of this, museums, like other sources of data, have their shortcomings. What are these short comings, and how severe are they? Are they so severe as to obviate the scientific value of the collections of fossils held by natural history museums? It is this topic that we address herein.

There is a useful analogy between the debate about the usefulness of natural history museum collections and the debate about the completeness of the fossil record. Are natural history museums representative of the fossil record, and are they complete enough to be adequate for research? We intend to pursue the analogy between the fossil record and natural history museums as we develop our ideas about paleontological collections. Just as numerous studies have concluded that the fossil record, albeit incomplete, is adequate to answer a wide variety of scientific questions, so too shall we argue that the data preserved in natural history museums are complete enough and adequate to answer a wide variety of important research questions in paleontology.