Attitude

Before you begin to work on a fossil collection, you must make sure you have the right attitude. If you are grumpy, or angry, tired, or depressed, you may make multiple mistakes in recording information, or inadvertently cause damage to the fossils. Shake it off, relax, and enjoy this opportunity to work in one of the greatest collections in the USA!

Don't let the project intimidate you. There are several million specimens in the Non-vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory collections. There are books and books of catalogs. The collections are the end product of more than a century of curious, enthusiastic, methodical, intense, and prolific paleontologists doing what they love to do. There is a lot of work involved in cleaning, labeling, identifying, repairing, and conserving the specimens. You will not be expected to do it all, although you will probably learn how to do it all. Just focus on the project at hand, keep at it, do it right, double-check your work, and it will get done.

Whatever you do, remember- the work may be boring and taxing and sometimes mindless, but you are handling and working with some very old life forms. They can be fabulous, or incredibly unusual. Even when they are 'only' molds, casts, or broken bits, they are always interesting. You will come across great treasures and extremely bizarre shapes. You will have puzzling problems figuring out handwriting or data provenance. You can see it all as an adventure through time and history.

Communication

Talk to the Collections Manager or Supervisor regularly. Keep them informed about what you are doing. If you are not closely supervised, it is a good idea to show your work to the Collections Manager or Supervisor on a regular basis for feedback and guidance. If you would like to modify procedures, or have ideas about adding or shortening steps, this is the perfect time to show them or present them. If you are not sure about something, just ask!

Take your time and Pay Attention

When you are working in a drawer of specimens, it is VERY EASY to pick up a specimen and inadvertently replace the specimen in a different tray. Provenance is thus screwed up. The best way to avoid that problem is to pick up the entire tray, place it on a surface away from the drawer, then remove the specimen to look at it. This method of removing tray and specimen avoids a second problem; often pieces of the fossil break off as you pick up the fossil. If you pick up the fossil over a drawer, the broken piece may land in any other tray in the drawer, sometimes becoming impossible to find. If you set the tray away from the drawer, the separated piece lands on a surface where it can be found immediately and returned to its proper tray.

A guaranteed way to screw up large numbers of fossils in a short period of time is to rush through a procedure without thinking about the consequences. Know and understand the sequence of procedures, what the purpose of each procedure is, and why they occur in that sequence. If you rush through in order to finish more fossils or to get done early to take off for the weekend you may accidentally skip one or more procedures. Information about the fossil may be lost as a result.

If you screw up

Don't panic. EVERYBODY screws up sometime during the never-ending task of collections' management. The critical thing about screwing up is to realize you have screwed up, to cease screwing up immediately, and to rectify the screw-up as soon as possible.

If you make a mistake (mislabel a specimen, break a specimen, lose a specimen, discard specimen labels, lose the connection between the specimen and the label, etc.), stop whatever it is you are doing and inform the Collections Manager or Supervisor immediately. There is a phone in the Southwest cage beside the cleaning table…

If the Collections Manager or Supervisor is not immediately available, make a detailed note describing the problem and place it with the specimen. Sign and date the note and include specimen number, drawer number, or other information that associates the note with the problem specimen(s).

If it is a minor problem, such as mislabeling a specimen, it can usually be rectified immediately. If it is a more serious problem it may take planning to figure out how to bring it all right again, e. g. if you drop a drawer of specimens, thereby jumbling the fossils and their labels.

Don't exacerbate the problem. If you have mixed up labels and specimens in a drawer, stop working on that drawer entirely. Or if you drop a drawer, don't move anything, (except to keep a specimen from being damaged, and then make a drawing or notation of where the specimen was moved from). The positions of undisturbed trays or other labels and specimens may help to resolve the problem.

Sometimes, the temptation arises to ignore the screw-up, to hide it, or worst of all, to destroy the evidence (the Presidential Syndrome). NONE of these is a proper or desirable response. You won’t be yelled at for making a mistake, but you might be yelled at if you try to cover it up.

Carry on. Learn from your mistake. Pass on what you learn to others.