Nicholas Simons Introduction

Botany Laboratory Week 3 - Summary:

During the third week of my internship I've noticed how streamlined my partners and I have become. Though I continue to spend most of my work hours mounting plants, it has become much easier to position the specimens and care for them in the correct way. As more weeks continue to pass I find that my work has become much more streamlined and I now rely on Bob and Richard less and less with each passing day. I also find that Dr. Sweeney is beginning to introduce new assignments. One of these tasks required us to take a group of specimens that belong to the same family and divide them by species. We then take divide each of the species by region and file them within folders. Since I have already had prior experience filing specimens, it was very easy to adapt.

Introduction for Research Poster:

Research collections, also known as biological libraries, provide a depiction of the past that can assist scientists and researchers discover in different studies. These collections can sometimes be inaccessible and can only be observed by the lab through which they are confined to. This summer I interned at a Botany lab led by Dr. Patrick Sweeney located within the Peabody Museum. Under his supervision, my partners and I are tasked with assisting the laboratory in their effect to catalog the Peabody's extensive collection of plant specimens. The digitization of these specimens is funded by the National Science Foundation and our occupation as catalogers supports the museum by taking plants that were once inaccessible and put them out into the world.