The primary goal of this project is to enter all of the University of Michigan’s Museum of Zoology Mollusk Collection (UMMZ-MC) cataloged lots (approximately 251000, including dry, ethanol-preserved, lyophilized, fossil and radula specimens) into an online Specify database. This process will involve georeferencing the data for GIS purposes, and also re-housing the dry specimens for their protection. A secondary goal is to develop an online type catalog with high-resolution images. The UMMZ-MC has long ranked amongst the most important freshwater and land snail collections in North America, being most notable for its excellent taxonomic and geographic coverage, type collection, and also for its relative age. A large fraction of its freshwater lots predate the major wave of extirpation and extinction associated with watershed industrialization, and the recent renaissance in the scientific and conservation biology study of the North American freshwater malacofauna has significantly heightened the UMMZ-MC’s research saliency.

We aim to have all of the specimens in our 251000 catalogued lots, re-housed in an acid-free environment, enumerated, taxonomically updated, georeferenced, Specify-databased and available online by the end of 2008.