Background and Significance of ICAL
On June 14-16, 1996, the National Science Foundation funded a Workshop on Invertebrate Paleontology Collections at George Washington University, attended by collection managers and scientists from most museums in the United States. A major item of concern, and of much discussion, was that of orphaned collections (those that are no longer wanted by their owner, but have scientific value). A closely related problem is presented by collections that are owned by museums or universities but that are under-studied or not studied at all. These two problems are common to all natural history collections, from minerals through insects and birds to fossils.
Orphaned collections pose a difficult problem for museums. The workshop determined that the problem is largely one of communication. Orphaned collections are usually offered to a single museum or university known to the donor. The targeted museum may not be able to take the collection for a variety of reasons and/or may not be able to take it within the normally short time stipulated by the donor. However, other research museums or universities may be interested in the orphaned collection for their own reasons and/or be able to accept a collection within the designated time period. The challenge is to find a mechanism to notify museums and universities when these collections are made available.
In addition, most museums and some universities have substantial collections that are not fully curated but that might be of interest to researchers in other institutions. Again, the problem is how to communicate the availability of these unstudied collections.
ICAL's purpose is to provide communication between donors, institutional collections, and research scientists through an interactive World Wide Web site.
The project was conceived by Jere Lipps. Its initial component (ICAL-Paleontology) was executed by Allen Collins at the Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, and was made possible by funding through the National Science Foundation Division of Environmental Biology's Research Collections in Systematics & Ecology Program (NSF grant number DEB-9616088).
The ICAL-Invertebrates site is hosted and maintained by The Field Museum, Chicago. It is based in concept and structure on the ICAL-Paleontology site.
ICAL-Invertebrates was planned and executed by Rüdiger Bieler, James Koeppl, and Brad Loetel and was supported by additional NSF funding (addendum to grant number DEB-9616372). We thank Meredith Lane (NSF) for major assistance, and many colleagues for discussions about underutilized collection issues.The Field MuseumChicago, is supporting ICAL through the use of its WWW server.
Should you have any problems with or suggestions for ICAL-Invertebrates please let us know Thanks.
Last updated 3/22/1999
by Brad Loetel and Tim Krauskopf
web master