Dear Conchlers,

This is a topic that we covered a long time ago, but with so many new
members, I'd like to broach it again to see if any new insights come up.
How do you arrange the shells in your collection? For example: By genus and
family, by location, by date of collection, by collector, by size? (For
fossils, they can also be arranged by geologic age or formation.) Do you
maintain shells in only one arrangement, or in more than one? Why?

Here at the heart of genteel Deep South civilization, the type specimens
are kept together, but the general arrangement is stratigraphic. That is,
fossils are arranged chiefly according to what geologic stratum (layer)
they came from, and only secondarily by taxon. Within a cabinet devoted,
say, to the Cretaceous Demopolis Chalk, there might be several drawers of
oysters, a few drawers of other bivalves, a drawer of gastropods,
nautiloids, and ammonites, and a drawer or two of non-molluscan fossils
such as polychaetes, brachiopods, wood, and so on. Since the fossils' main
use over time has been to document the geologic mapping of the state, it
makes sense to keep them together. Still, it does hamper the work of
taxonomists who want to see every specimen belonging to a certain family.
This can necessitate a veritable odyssey through file cards and cabinets,
with tables having to be moved aside to access some of the cabinets in the
cramped basement room. I usually do the bulk of that for the researcher the
day before the visit, but it's always an adventure and you never know what
will turn up.

As a paleoecologist, I experimented with arranging the fossils of one
formation according to the locality where they were collected, so you can
see the animals that lived together at a glance. This is ecologically
insightful, but it makes it very hard to find specimens of any one species,
so I can't recommend it for most collectors.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama

P.S. Thanks for the messages on poison ivy and bug spray. I don't use bug
sprays myself; DEET makes me sneeze and sneeze until I wash it off. So I
just bring along a sweet person who attracts most of the bugs instead.