Today we submitted the Final Performance Report for our most recent collection cataloguing grant, which ended on March 31st. The Museum received two successive grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to complete processing and cataloguing the
backlog of its scientific collection and gain full intellectual control over the collection holdings. IMLS funding enabled the Museum to hire specialized staff to work on the project. The first grant ran from October 2012 through September 2016, the second one from October 2015 through March 2019. At the start of the first grant, only about 29,000 lots from the collection had been catalogued. At the end of the second grant, that figure approached 129,000 lots, for a total of about 100,000 lots catalogued over a period of 6.5 years.