Just I guess I guess the variety of it.

That every specimen is like a little time capsule.

So again, most of them are study skins not not made to look lifelike, but just to be studied in drawers like this by researchers.

I think it's important to know that these resources are here in a state university.

They belong to the state.

We have more mounted specimens here, they are in all of these cabinets in this row.

They're here for not only global researchers to access, but also Iowans.

For a small collection, You're right, it does have a lot of diversity.

And I love taking care of them and making sure that they are here for people to study and for people to see and for people to use for, I hope... Well, I'm not going to be here that long, but I hope that these objects are still here in hundreds of years.

So we refer to this area as the vault because of this gigantic vault door, and we've got some really special stuff back here.

We have about 136,000 objects and specimens.

All right, let's go over here.

And those are in the areas of cultural objects.

This is one of my favorites.

It's a bag that's made out of swans feet.

Ornithological specimens, so birds, nests, and eggs.

They are extinct, but they don't exist anywhere but in museum collections like this.

Insects.

These do not come from Iowa.

Mammals and also aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates like snails and clams and things.

Some of them are very old and used to be in jars like these old ones that we haven't been able to open and transfer the materials into newer jars.

So at one point back in the university's early history, the collections here formed the basis for some of the scientific education that went on here at the university.

The collections came from university led expeditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Frank Russell, for example, was one student who went to the Arctic and subarctic regions of western Canada and interacted with cultures there, brought back cultural objects, brought back the Musk oxen that you see on display in the mammal gallery here .

Brought back birds, even insects, just anything that he could find along the way and interacted with cultures and learned about the cultures that he that he saw there.

In this row, we've got our mammal collection.

So as director of research collections, it's my job to ensure the long term preservation of our collections.

We don't use chemicals in our collection anymore to deter pests, but we do set out these sticky traps, and I'm happy to report that this one is empty.

So because we have collections in such a wide array of areas, that means that I need to know how to take care of a lot of different kinds of materials.

So these are the goldfinches, and I pick up some things along the way about individual species or birds in general.

But for the most part, I know more about how to take care of things than about the life stories of the birds, for example.

I also teach museum object preservation to students here at the University in the Museum study certificate program.

So I go through each one and I section it out and blow dry with the blow dryer.

It's not just roadkill.

It's an educational tool.

I've used learning how to do this process.

I just I deal with so many different kinds of things, and I'm fortunate to be able to determine what I work on each day and what my priorities are.

So I just love the variety of it.

So when I was in high school, I would get a chocolate éclair from Barbara's bakeshop and bring it up here and eat it in the company of this moose family.

I can't explain why this was a good spot for me to come to brood.

I just felt I felt at home here with these serene animals.

You know, as I mentioned before, that every specimen is like a little time capsule that takes us back to a point in history and tells us a lot about what was happening in that in that area.

What was happening in that specimen, in that species.

And you can compare that to what's happening in the same area now or to the species in a different area now.

Because the university scientists, way back when, were very active in their expedition and exploration of our planet, they did bring these things back to Iowa.

And they are.., they're, they're