Annual report 2011, approved of by the board of our foundation in their meeting on 31 march 2012.
PREFACE
Sadly we this year lost Daan Smits, a good friend of our foundation. We are thankful for all his kindness, mainly in providing us with nice terrestial snails and introducing us to several of his many friends all over the world. In 2011 we were still very busy reorganising our collections. A large part of our collections is moved to our department in the town of Rhenen. The collections in Rhenen are in the proces of being povided with new labels following modern nomenclature.
Miss van der Laan donated a large number of small recent shells out of the collection of her father to our foundation. These are very suitable to give visiting children a few shells. A number of corals and shellcuriosities out of this material we included in our showcollections. We obtained some nice material of the Oekraïnian eocene through exchange.
Our educational leaflet is available in Dutch, English and French. As in previous years the foundation is included in the city guide of Utrecht and in the so called "Kidsgids". In 2011 there where 7097 visitors on our site; 27948 pages were vieuwed. We were able to asist Mr. Jan Johan ter Poorten in his research of Cardiidae. He is working on a new book of this family in association with several other scientists. He took a lot of pictures and measures of some of our Cardiidae.
COLLECTIONS
The "Shell of the Year" is Maussenetia staadti (Cossmann,1904), found by Dr. R.Hessel in the thanetian (paleocene) of the Paris Basin.
On December 31st 2011, there were 55.801 records in our database containing 373.509 specimen. However, not all this material is in our own collections any more. We are donating part of our collections to several bigger Natural History Musea. We donated a large collection to the University of Amsterdam. This material is now included in the collections of the Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis in Leiden. We donated a collection of fossil shells to the Museum of Natural-History Rotterdam (NMR) as well. We keep administration of all items that were originally in our collections and thus can always be called upon to provide information.
The effective display area in our 69 showcases in Utrecht amounts to 84 m². In Utrecht we display 3882 lots with 9114 objects.
In our department at Rhenen there are now five nice showcases available.
The storage capacity of the drawers in Utrecht is about 116 m² (1250 drawers). For our department in Rhenen this has yet to be estimated.
Dr.R.Hessel did some collecting in France and the Netherlands.
HOUSING
The main establishment of our foundation is housed in Utrecht in the premises at the Kievitdwarsstraat 17. Anno 2011 the following accommodation is available there:
- display of fossil shells in living quarters (40 m²)
- a basement for displaying miscellaneous fossils (43 m²)
- a cellar for displaying recent shells (30 m²)
- a cellar for storage of surplus shells (7 m²)
A department of our museum is now in Rhenen, mainly for fossil shells from Miocene and older layers.
Here the storage and management area amounts to 50 m². Please contact our secretary if you want to pay a visit there.
EQUIPMENT, FURNITURE AND MATERIALS
A small new showcase was installed in Utrecht and a large one as well as two smaller ones in Rhenen.
LIBRARY
A small library for naming shells and educational purposes is available. We can't lend books to the public but give assistance whenever possible. Our library now contains 652 titles.
CONTACT
We can be reached at the following E-mail address: fossil.shell.museum@xs4all.nl
Our website : http://www.fossilshells.nl/
also at: http://www.internationalshellmuseum.nl/
Our website exceeded the allowed 500 MB, so now we have an upgrade to 1000 MB.
PLANS FOR 2012
There will be still more changes in the organisation of our collections. It is still unclear if we will be able to make collecting trips in 2012.
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