Evaluation of the Dry Malacology Collection of Museo de La Plata.

DARRIGRAN, G.; ORTIZ BLANCHE, M.; DAMBORENEA, C.

Congreso; Mollusca 2014. Encuentro de las Américas; 2014

Biological collections are the primary source of knowledge and information on biodiversity, bothspatially and temporally. They are used for scientific research, as an educational resource andenvironmental modelling by the state to define strategies for the conservation of resources of thecountry. The Malacological Collection of the Museo de La Plata, with a total of 13,228 lots, is oneof the most important in Latin America and gathers molluscs? samples from different ecosystems(marine, terrestrial and freshwater). The lots are from all over the world, but mostly from SouthAmerica and specially Argentina. The collection includes material collected since mid- 1800 andcontinues to grow. Several projects are undertaken in the Malacological Section. Between them, theevaluation of the 9,507 lots of the dry mollusc collection is performed. For this we consider fourstates: (1) conservation (2) storage, (3) identification, (4) documentation. The information obtainedfrom this evaluation is necessary to establish work priorities. The aim of this paper is to present themethodology used and the results obtained so far. To date 30 % of the collection was analyzed. Ittakes into account 15 parameters, including: three levels in relation to conservation (environment,furniture, containers); catalog status; labels and digitalization; identification (level and quality),other information (eg historical data, geographic information, use, number of items per lot). Theresults of this partial evaluation show that the 53% is in an acceptable level. In 2013 there wasperformed a preliminary evaluation of a pool of items representing 20% of the collection. Theresults of both evaluations are compared. Currently, we continue with the evaluation in order toinclude all lots of dry collection. Through the overall evaluation, we will have the informationneeded to plan future activities in conservation, digitization and documentation.