The document summarizes information about the Coleoptera collection at the Natural History Museum in London. It finds that sending specimens out on loan is an extremely efficient and cost-effective way to have material identified compared to attempting identifications in-house. On average, loans result in over 12,000 undetermined specimens being identified each year, along with gifts adding over 3,000 specimens to the collection. This represents a significant return for a relatively small investment of curator time and postage costs. Loans are therefore considered vital for ongoing collection development and research.

2. Like many things in the world of loans………

3. In the Coleoptera Section we
have
• 5 curators (not all full time)
• 22,000 drawers of specimens
• 205,523 species of beetle
• 88,000 species represented by Types
• ???,000,000 specimens ?!?

4. Left to right
Alex (volunteer) Beulah Garner (Caraboidea, Cleroidea) Emeline (volunteer), R
Booth (Staphylinoidea and Cucujoidea) Christine Taylor (aquatic beetles)
Malcolm Kerley (Scarabs and Elateroidea)

5. The issue of Research Loans has
been (in the past) among the
most polarising issues
among Natural History Curators.

6. Loans and
visitors
25%
Public outreach
5%
Corporate
5%
Database and
web
20%
Curation and
Collection
Development
45%

7. Arguments for and against loans
•Quantifiable
•Unquantifiable

8. Quantifiable advantages
∀• IDENTIFICATION of existing
material
∀• GIFTS of new material
∀• CITATION of the Museum

9. Quantifiable disadvantages
•
∀• RISK of LOSS
∀• TIME COSTS
∀• FINANCIAL COSTS

10. Dataset used
• Total Number of loans 8063
• Total Number of Specimens 484093
• Number of loans presently out 1715
• Number of specimens presently out 176149
• Range (Specimens) 1 - 8500
• Mean (Specimens) 60
• Mode (Specimens) 1
• Median (Specimens) 8

11. • A very entomological
problem……

12. • Zoology
2 specimens

13. • Palaeontology
2 specimens

14. • Entomology
15,842 specimens

16. Proportion of returned loans consisting of named, indet and
Type material
N.= 113912
Type specimens,
6615, 6%
Indet specimens,
81049, 71%
Named specimens,
26248, 23%
More than 70% of material in loans is borrowed as indet…

17. This has been consistent for a number of years
Returned specimens by category
last 10 years
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
18000
20000
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
Type
Nam
Indet

18. 29% of returned loans include a
gift .
• TOTAL GIFTS 20423
• NAMED MATERIAL 7937
• INDET MATERIAL 11182
• PARATYPES 1279
• HOLOTYPES 25

19. Publications
• Total Borrowers in dataset 676
• Total borrowers who published 599
• Range (# of papers lifetime) 0 - 276
• Mean number of papers 24.7
• Total Papers by borrowers 16760
• Proportion of Taxonomic literature
written by our borrowers 55%

20. 1. NHM, London (71)
2. Smithsonian (62)
3. NHM, Vienna (57)
4. MNHN, Paris (43)
5. Nat. Hist. Mus. Stockh. (20)
6. Univ. of Kansas (13)
7. Zool. Mus., Lund (11)
8. NHM, Stuttgart (11)
9. ZMUC (9)
10. Austral. Nat. Ins. Col. (9)
11. INBio, Costa Rica (9)
12. Inst. Zool. China (9)
13. Naturalis, Leiden (3)
14. Mirzayans Mus. Iran (1)
Relative citation of Beetle
Collections
Early 21st
Century
Screened journals:
Koleopterologische Rundschau (Austria)
Coleopterists Bulletin (USA)
Zootaxa

21. Category number proportion
TYPES 6 0.09%
NAMED SPECIMENS 12 0.05%
INDET. SPECIMENS 203 0.25%
221 0.19%
TOTAL LOANS LOST 5 0.24%
TOTAL SPECIMENS LOST
Losses – 1990 to present

22. Costs
• 25% of 5 Curators’ time
• Postage: Average of £4.76 per loan
(£0 for hand carried, £5 UK, £7 EEC, £9
World Zone 1 and £11 World zone 2).

23. Unquantifiable Arguments in
favour of loans
• What is the value of a prominent
scientist’s belief that your museum is
among the finest in the world, not just in
terms of the breadth of the collections,
but the ease with which he and his
students, to whom he transmits his
enthusiasm, can access them?

24. • What is the cost of a promising
PhD that was never completed
because the student was unable
to see crucial Type material?

25. • Aside from the considerations
of an institute’s reputation,
there are the ethical and
philosophical questions of
ownership and intellectual
property.

26. Unquantifiable Arguments
against loans
• “Why should I help her with her research
when I could spend that time doing my
own”
• Why are we helping another museum’s
or country’s science and not our own

27. • These last arguments are not only idle,
selfish, petty, nationalistic and generally
totally vile; they also (willfully?) ignore the
evidence….

28. Recent years have shown a consistent ris
in the number of loans
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
y1988
y1990
y1992
y1994
y1996
y1998
y2000
y2002
y2004
y2006
y2008
y2010
y20

30. •
2011: Loans for 34 people (56 boxes) were
carried out
• 41 people's pre-existing loans in 62 boxes
returned
• exchanged loans with 58 people from 14
countries!
• The total number of specimens identified
for us by borrowers from our undetermined
material was 3,413,
• (19 Holotypes of new species, and 226 new
paratypes).

31. Loans to Prague
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
Oct-04
Apr-05
Oct-05
Apr-06
Oct-06
Apr-07
Oct-07
Apr-08
Oct-08
Apr-09
Oct-09
Apr-10
Oct-10
Apr-11
Oct-11
Apr-12
new species to
collection as a result
2012 880
2011 1278
2010 908
2009 1268
2008 1281
2007 5615

32. Coleoptera specimens on loan by
year
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
y1988
y1990
y1992
y1994
y1996
y1998
y2000
y2002
y2004
y2006
y2008
y2010
y2012

34. • In the Average Year the team of 5 curators
would invest in loans:
• 25% of their time
• (2410 Hours)
• £1270.92 in postage

35. They would send out…..
• 267 loans
• Totalling 17,436 specimens
• (average of 65.3 specimens per loan)
• 71% (12380) would be
Undetermined
• 23% (4010) would be named
specimens
• 6% (1046) would be Types

36. • The 12,380 indet specimens
would come back identified
free of charge, often by the
best specialists available in
each individual group.

37. •When these loans came
back they would be
accompanied by gifts
comprising 3,054
mounted specimens

38. •of these, 1743 would be
unnamed, 1211 would
be named, 196 would be
paratypes, and 4 would
be Holotypes

39. • Following these loans,
several hundred taxonomic
publications would
acknowledge or cite the
Museum’s collections.

40. • Based on the Insect Identification
Service’s recommendation that
specialists should allow 30 minutes
to make an accurate species level
identification, if Museum staff had
identified the undetermined
material included in the above
loans themselves, they would have
needed to spend 6190 hours (3.2
working years).

41. • This is 2.5 times the time needed to send
out and return the loans
• Therefore by sending indet material out
on loan it can be processed and
identified 2.5 times as efficiently as it
could be done in house, i.e. at a saving
of 3780 working hours per year (the
equivalent of having two new full time
staff working on identifications).

42. • To purchase 12,380 identifications at the
standard commercial rate of £86.00 per
specimen would have cost £1,064,680.00!
• In addition to this, the specimens have
been named by leading specialists,
instead of generalist museum curators, so
the quality of the identifications is likely
to be higher.

43. Other advantages
• Types among determined material
• Training of staff by osmosis/ contact
• Fulfilling our responsibility as a repository
of Type Material.
• Bolstering our reputation in the world
scientific community
• Advancing science in a time of biodiversity
crisis.

44. • This is an unbelievable return
for 25% of curator time and a bit
of postage….
• LOANS MUST BE the single
most important factor in
collections development for
large, difficult taxa.

45. Come and visit us!! Please collect an
deposit your
Natural History
Museum loans
the foyer on the
way out
It’s fun!!!