An object is worth a thousand pictures. Any student will attest to the fact that seeing and touching a real natural history specimen is a completely different experience from looking at a picture or reading a description. Museum collections, particularly those of universities, are constantly used for teaching purposes, to show students first hand what organisms past and present really look like instead of what their teachers tell them they look like. This is true at all educational levels, from kindergarden to graduate school.

Where would you go if you had an insect, bird, or fossil that you could not identify? Collections in a natural history museum are not only the storehouse for the specimens that eventually make it onto public exhibit, they form the basis for identification of unknown specimens brought to it by nonscientist officials and the general public.

Voucher specimens are parts of, or wholly preserved plants or animals collected and worked on during the course of research. They serve as an object reference that ensures that the study can be reproduced. Such specimens ensure the credibility of the study and its publications and serve as the supporting material for publications..

Many regulatory decisions made by governments are supported by research that depends on scientific collections, including natural science collections. These decisions can have a major impact on foreign and domestic trade.

Worldwide, museums, universities, and other institutions have been amassing collections since the 17th Century. By analyzing specimens collected at different points in time, researchers can reconstruct important historical changes. Natural science collections offer scientists a unique window on the past.

Collections document the condition of the world around us, tracking soil, air, and water, help track pollution, and enable us to model future environmental changes so they can be better managed.

Scientific collections of agricultural pests and other threats to food safety and security are used routinely for border inspection, consumer protection, and control measures.

Whether they are used to track down the cause of a deadly new epidemic or to learn important lessons from an ancient one, collections are pivotal resources in the fight to save lives and to improve the health and safety of people around the world.

Research on collections is a critical part of developing strategies for defending agriculture and food against terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies.

The easy movement of trade goods through ports is vital to the global economy. At the same time, invasive species that stow away with these goods can threaten our crops, ecosystems, and animal and human health. In the United States there are estimated to be over 50,000 invasive species; collectively, they cause nearly $120 billion worth of environmental damage and loss per year and can spread infectious diseases to animal and human populations.

Many scientific collections contain unique objects that cannot be collected again easily – or at all, in many cases. They are priceless.

One of the spectacular examples of events that happen almost every day in museum collections: the discovery or rediscovery of objects unseen or forgotten or misinterpreted by science, and the insight and connections that so often occur only when a researcher handles, examines, and compares objects first hand and ponders their significance.

Natural science collection specimens often serve us in ways that could not have been imagined at the time when they were collected. Sometimes these unanticipated uses can help solve today’s most pressing scientific problems. Likewise, years, even decades from now, new analytical techniques will allow researchers to use the same specimens to answer new questions. There are countless examples of “new” specimens being “discovered” in collections and recognized as scientifically important long after their original acquisition.