Despite more standardized methods for the management of natural history collections, there seemingly is no single standard for the documentation, arrangement, and housing for vital tissues. As a result of the implementation of multiple systems in our tissue collection through the years, the collection was not as efficient as it needed to be.

One of the biggest improvements resulting from this project is the decreased amount of time and effort to pull loans. A six-phase project was begun to improve the efficiency and organization of the genetic resources collection. Through the use of a rack and cell box system, each tissue is tracked to the individual location level that is recorded in a database.

The time it now takes to locate and remove a tissue for subsampling has been reduced from up to an hour down to less than a minute. In addition, the organization system reduces the amount of handling time of the associated tissues, and has increasing storage capacities by up to 25%.

Throughout the process the collection has been available for use. Phase III of six, a complete inventory of the collection was completed in early 2006. Phase IV and V, already begun involve replacement of damaged tubes and barcodes as well as cell boxing of tissues for easier retrieval, and verifying data. Currently, approximately half of our tissue collection is barcoded, while about a third of the collection is in cell boxes. A preliminary database exists with all the current samples in it. However, we are in the process of updating and verifying voucher data for the samples. When all six phases are complete we hope to have a unified database for searching the NSRL collections that includes the samples contained within the GRC.

 

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