Facilities
and Collection History
During the first
half of the 20th century, the Departmental
collections suffered much neglect and only comprised
about 20,000 lots. Cutarorial operations underwent
renewal during the 1960's under Donn Rosen's
guidance. With support from NSF, about half of the
space currently occupied by the Department was either
constructed or renovated. The existing collections
were moved and transferred to 40% isopropanol. Since
Rosen's renewal, the collection has expanded to
approximately 2,000,000 specimens, 200,000 lots,
35,000 skeletons, and 500 types. Most of the increase
is in marine fishes and freshwater fishes from the
eastern United States. In the early 1980s, an
additional facilities grant was awarded by NSF, and
the collection area was doubled and renovated,
expanding the space occupied by the Department to
15,000 square feet. The Ichthyology section then
occupied some 15,000 square feet of office, lab, and
storage space on the first and second floors, and a
mezzanine floor, of three separate but contiguous
buildings in the Museum complex. With additional NSF
support (1990-1992), alcoholic specimens were
transferred from isopropanol to ethanol, large
specimen storage and dry skeleton collection space
were expanded, and all catalog data was entered into
a computerized data base. At the time of the 1980's
reorganization, the Museum made available additional
space to the Department. By 1995, growth of the
collections elevated the ranking of the department to
fourth of eight among major international centers
(Poss & Collette, Second Survey of Fish
Collection in the United States and Canada,
Copeia
1995(1):48-70),
trailing only the collections of the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural
History, The University of Michigan's Museum of
Zoology, and the California Academy of Sciences in
terms of absolute collection size.
In
1997, the Department underwent a $3.5 million
rennovation as part of the construction of the Rose
Center for Earth and Space, which provided
significant upgrade of the department's offices and
labs and added significant new storage capability and
a classroom. As a result, the Department of
Ichthyology currently occupies approximately 17,000
square feet of office, laboratory, and storage space
on four floors of two adjacent buildings.
