Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016 - 28

Member Profile Member Profile - Erica Krimmel by Ann Pinzl Our members play many different roles from collection management and conservation to databasing and informatics to research and education. Many of our members come from a traditional research background while many of our new members are coming into the field from the museum studies field. Our hope is to introduce our membership to a variety of individuals who are playing very dynamic roles in their museum's activities. We are casting our net broadly and selecting individuals from institutions of all sizes and backgrounds. Snapshot What is your name? Erica Krimmel What is your position? Assistant Collections Manager Where do you work? The Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum Erica Krimmel Describe the nature of the collections you work with. When did you join SPNHC? The Chicago Academy was founded in 1857, and some of our collections date back to the 1830s. They embody what is meant to be a nineteenth-century naturalist, with most collectors being amazingly skilled "hobbyists" who dabbled in every discipline. Today our collections are organized into sixteen disciplines, from ornithology to geology, plus historical objects and audiovisual media. We also house archives, including many related to our collections. First joined SPNHC in January 2015. What are your responsibilities for them? In-depth We have only two staff currently (myself and our Director of Collections) and we practice interdisciplinary collections management, so my responsibilities are broad. I love working in a smaller collection because I have the opportunity to gain experience with all aspects of collections management and in a variety of disciplines. My background in information science is particularly relevant to the data management aspects of my work, and I am primarily responsible for migrating our specimen data to a collection management system, as well as managing the technical aspects of the new system. Brief Description of employment history. Formerly the collections manager at U.C. Berkeley's Sagehen Creek Field Station, before that an undergraduate curatorial assistant in the U.C. Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History Collections. Please tell us briefly of your academic background. I attended the University of California, Santa Cruz for a BA in environmental studies, and San Jose State University for a Master of Library and Information Science. What drew you to the natural history field? On my third day of college I went on a tour of the Environmental Studies department at U.C. Santa Cruz. We stopped by the natural history collections and I just never left. I volunteered, interned, or worked in the collections every quarter until I graduated. Natural history, to me, is all about taking a simple set of skills, e.g., the ability to observe, and applying it to really complex problems, like the evolution of life. The accessibility drew me into this field, and the complexity keeps me here. 28 * SPNHC Connection Describe some of your activities. Focusing on projects is the only way I can feel productive. Our to-do list is long enough to last several decades, so I try to bite off manageable bits, often focusing on one or two disciplines at a time. I'm currently in birdland, where my activities include migrating oology and ornithology data into our new collections management system, publishing this http://www.spnhc.org http://www.spnhc.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections September 2016