R. Dale Thomas Collection (NLU)
Prior to its move to BRIT, the R. Dale Thomas Collection (NLU) was housed at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. The herbarium acronym NLU comes from the University’s previous name—Northeast Louisiana University—when Dr. R. Dale Thomas took the collection from 250 specimens to over 400,000. Today, the NLU herbarium contains an estimated 472,000 specimens […]
A Ferntastic Day with NLU
On Sunday, February 25th, BRIT staff had the pleasure of hosting members of the Southwestern Fern Society, our local chapter of the American Fern Society, for a volunteer day. Six volunteers worked hard to organize and sort ferns and lycophytes from the recently acquired University of Louisiana at Monroe’s (NLU) herbarium collection. Ferns and lycophytes […]
All Sealed Up
One of the first steps in curating the NLU collection is ensuring its security. Herbarium specimens are vulnerable to damage from light, bugs, rodents, dust, and water. The metal cabinets used to store herbarium specimens are designed to protect from these damaging elements conveniently and easily – but only if they are in good shape and sealed airtight. […]
Curating the NLU Collection
The R. Dale Thomas Collection (NLU) officially completed its journey to BRIT in August 2017. However, this was only the beginning! Follow the NLU rescue team for the next year as they work to make this priceless collection secure and accessible to researchers and the public. Prior to its move to BRIT, the R. Dale Thomas Collection (NLU) […]
Bringing NLU to BRIT
In March 2017, the scientific community was ablaze with the news that the University of Louisiana at Monroe would no longer be able to care for its natural history collection, including a significant fish collection and 470,000 herbarium specimens. The issue made national headlines as well, inspiring articles from the likes of Smithsonian Magazine, The Washington Post, Nature, Gizmodo, and Atlas Obscura. […]
Books, Botany, and Bugs
This article was written by Sydney Jackson, 2017 BRIT Summer Intern and student at Austin College in Sherman, TX. This past summer, summer of 2017, I was a research intern at BRIT. When first coming to BRIT I did not know what to expect. All the perceptions of internships that I had in my head […]