Documentation of Dry Preserved Mounted Mammalian Collection of The Zoology Museum

Abstract

The museums have a long history dating back to the 3rd century B.C. when the first known museum was opened at the University of Alexandria in Egypt. As we know, museums are an institution that collects, document, preserve, exhibit and interpret material evidence and associated information for public benefit. The value of a museum's collection depends on the amount of information it possesses about each item. Even a valuable object loses much of its worth if details like its origin, purpose, and unique characteristics are unknown. This holds for art objects, where artist names, historical context, and associations are equally important. Failing to provide such basic information is a dereliction of a museum's primary duty, and it should maintain records in registers rather than relying on staff memory, which can fade with time and increased collections. These records also serve legal purposes, addressing potential disputes about objects even decades after their acquisition into the collection. The museum movement in India is to be traced to the Asiatic Society of Bengal founded by the brilliant scholar Sir William Jone in 1784. The greatest motion to the development of museums in the country was given at the time of Lord Curzon. Calcutta is the first full-fledged university museum in the name of Sir Ashutosh Mukherji to come into existence. The Department of Zoology was established as a constituent section of the MAO College in 1909. It was the individual and untiring efforts of Prof. M.B. Mirza in 1935, which resulted in the creation of a museum on department premises that houses more than 1000 species ranging from porifera to mammals. The focus of the work is to develop a well-designed documentation system for the dry-preserved mounted mammalian collection displayed in the Zoology Museum, Faculty of Life Science, A.M.U. Aligarh, along with what preventive measures should be taken by collecting maximum information as far as possible from every
possible source. Later, this well-developed documentation system will be followed by a well-designed automated system by which an online database will be developed and made available via the Zoology Department’s official website to provide valuable information worldwide about its valuable, rare and diverse collection.