(Approved of by the board of our foundation in their next meeting of 20140329.)
PREFACE
In Mai the family Niemeijer donated us a number of recent shells collected by their late parent Mr. A.J.Niemeijer. We will use them to stimulate visiting children. A small collection of stones, minerals and fossils collected by the late MRS. Marjan van Belkum was given to our foundation by her son Mr. R.Jansen. Mrs. Oboh Ikuenobe kindly donated some nice material from the Eocene of Nigeria. The year 2013 was again quite productive. Our website grew from 9.500 to 19.000 pictures. Mr. Evert Jan van der Ley as ever gave us lots of support to keep the site in good working order. A new entry to our collections was added and visitors are now able to find our shells arranged in taxanomical order. Looking for a special genus is now possible too.
Our foundation took part in a comprehensive sampling of the Mioceen near Miste (Winterswijk) in the dutch province Gelderland. This big happening was organised by the "Werkgroep voor Tertiaire and Kwartaire Geologie" (Studygroup for Tertiary and Quaternairy Geology), of wich we are members since many years. A link to this organisation: http://www.wtkg.org/
We assisted several people with pictures for publications they are working on. Also we helped several people identifying their finds. We are recorded at the Chamber of Commerce in Utrecht (number 41184657) The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) registered our foundation under its alias "International Fossil Shell Museum" in the Global Biodiversity Resources Discovery System (GBRDS, under development) under the code AMadk6LPCEF
New rules from our Ministry of Finance will apply in 2014, asking for more information to be published about organisation and financing of all foundations for "the general good". We will therefore now put our yearly financial survey on our site. Info about our board and our activities is already present.
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". The government of our hometown (Utrecht) investigated the possibilities for disabled persons to visit our museum. There is a link on our site where the results can be seen (look under the knob "museum"). In 2013 there where 10.042 visitors on our site; 76.373 pages were vieuwed in 17.656 visits.
"SHELL OF THE YEAR 1213".
In 2013 we participated in a big sampling event in the Langhian (Miocene) of Miste near Winterswijk. We found several very interesting Mollusca. It was difficult to choose the shell of the year 2013 from these new finds. We decided to give the honour to Meiocardia harpa (Goldfuss,1840). This marvellous shell in good condition was found by drs. Benno Hessel on September 7 th. The shell is 54 mm.
COLLECTIONS
On December 31st 2013, there were 61.938 records in our database containing 422.305 specimen. However, not all this material is in our own collections any more. We are donating parts of our collections to several bigger Natural History Musea. In 2009 we donated a large collection of recent shells 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 of the Plio/Pleistocene of Florida to the Museum of Natural-History Rotterdam (NMR) in 2010 and in 2011 our Pleistocene shells of Egypt were donated to them as well. Futhermore we donated in 2011 several hundreds of drawercases to them. 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 mē. 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 mē. For our department in Rhenen this has yet to be estimated.
We collected in France, Germany and very intensively in the Netherlands. We also swapped fossils with people in the Ukraine, Australia and Italy.
HOUSING
The main establishment of our foundation is housed in Utrecht in the premises at the Kievitdwarsstraat 17. Anno 2013 the following accommodation is available there:
- display of fossil shells in living quarters (40 mē)
- a basement for displaying miscellaneous fossils (43 mē)
- a cellar for displaying recent shells (30 mē)
- a cellar for storage of surplus shells (7 mē)
In the town of Rhenen (Province Utrecht) there is a department of our museum, mainly for fossil shells from Miocene and older layers.
Here the storage and management area amounts to 50 mē. Please contact our secretary if you want to pay a visit there.
EQUIPMENT, FURNITURE AND MATERIALS
No alterations in 2012.
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 736 titles.
In 2011 we donated a big part of our library to the Museum of Natural-History Rotterdam (NMR).
CONTACT
We can be reached at the following E-mail addresses:
fossil.shell.museum@xs4all.nl(main address)
sss2rhenen@gmail.com (Rhenen department)
Our website : http://www.fossilshells.nl/
also at: http://www.internationalshellmuseum.nl/
PLANS FOR 2014
Further additions to our site will be made.
We plan to collect in France and the Netherlands.
We will try to establish a working relation with Naturalis in Leiden.
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