Dr. Harris and Worth Pugh awarded $78K IMLS Grant to rehouse and digitize its department’s collection of ~20,000 crayfish specimens

Dr. Philip Harris and Worth Pugh, Coordinator of Zoological Collections, have been awarded $78,323 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to rehouse and digitize its department’s collection of ~20,000 crayfish specimens. This award will be used to hire and train paid and volunteer student workers who will catalog, label, and shelve specimens. In addition, staff will also conduct database cleanup for crayfish lots from waterbodies across Alabama, updating taxonomy and georeferencing for increased accuracy. Finally, to advance the scientific understanding of the distribution and biodiversity of crayfishes in the ecosystems in the Southeastern United States, staff will make specimen data available to the public by sharing information with online data repositories for natural history collections.