Borrowing Material
As we've grown over the years, a number of changes have been made to our loan policy. Loanee's, are encouraged to read through the sections below so as to be aware of any changes. Notable changes to our policies can be found on dna sequencing, specimen retentions and type depostion. These changes apply to all OSAC material, including outstanding loans. An attempt will be made in the upcoming year to contact all OSAC loan holders to notify them of these changes.
USE OF SPECIMENS ON CAMPUS
OSAC specimens are available for use by researchers from Monday through Friday from 9am-5pm. Specimens are not generally available for classroom or outreach use. OSU maintains a teaching collection and an outreach collection specifically for these purposes.
Because of the many researchers who rely on OSAC's material, researchers wishing to remove specimens from OSAC, even for short time periods, must complete an OSAC loan form. Large number of specimens may require significant time to process. All material on loan are governed by OSAC's loan policies below (e.g., dissections, sequencing, retentions, etc.).
OSAC LOAN POLICIES
LOAN REQUESTS- To expedite loans, loan requests should be made using our electronic loan form or via e-mail to the collection manager.
LENGTH OF LOAN- Oregon State Arthropod Collection typically loans specimens on a 3 year renewable basis. We reserve the right to: (1) reduce the initial length of a loan, (2) request the return of some or all specimens on loan at any time during the loan period, (3) refuse the renewal of any loan, and (4) refuse loans to researchers or institutions with large outstanding or delinquent loans.
COSTS - Oregon State Arthropod Collection will do its best to cover costs of packaging, labor and postage related to preparing the initial loan. Priority for processing loans will be given to individuals or institutions with funds available to help cover these costs. Please contact the Collection Manager if you are able to contribute to the cost of processing your loan request.
RETURN OF LOAN – The borrower agrees to cover all costs, material and labor involved in properly and safely returning these specimens to Oregon State University. Failure to return mateiral, incomplete returns (missing specimens) or poorly packaged (damaged specimens) will jeopardize the ability of this researcher and their institution to obtain future loans.
TRANFER of SPECIMENS- Transfer of Oregon State Arthropod Collection specimens between institutions and persons – especially outside of the continental United States, without our prior written consent, is not permitted. Doing so may result in the premature termination of your loan and/or the inability to receive future loans from Oregon State University. OSAC may request that the material be returned to OSAC and re-issued to the new loanee under a newly drafted loan agreement.
DISSECTIONS– We realize that viewing genitalia or other internal structures is often necessary. Still, please inform us in advance if your research will require dissections or destructive sampling of our specimens. Whenever possible, dissected parts must remain physically associated with the specimen. Complete disarticulation of specimens and permanently slide-mounting specimens or dissected parts is forbidden without prior written approval.
DNA SAMPLING - Extraction of RNA and DNA from OSAC material is not permitted without the written approval of the OSAC Collection Manager, Curator or Director. OSAC reserves the right to refuse DNA extraction if they feel it will cause significant damage or the destruction of specimens. OSAC may require that the RNA/DNA extraction from our specimens occur on campus in one of our sequencing facilities; with the extraction (rather than the specimen) subsequently loaned.
Voucher specimens or diagnosable portions thereof (e.g., lepidoptera wings, or male genitalia) of any extracted specimen MUST be deposited at OSAC and their OSAC specimen #'s be reported as part of any ensuing publications or GenBank sequence accessions.
Without a prior written agreement to the contrary, all extracted RNA and DNA obtained from OSAC specimens remain the property of OSU and may be requested at the completion of your loan. On request, sequence data from OSAC specimens must be made available to OSU researchers*.
TYPE DEPOSITION – The Oregon State Arthropod Collection requires that any primary and secondary type material (e.g., holotypes, paratypes, syntypes, etc.) that is created from our specimens be deposited in OSAC. If numerous secondary type specimens exist, authors may request that one or more of these specimens be placed in other public institutions, but we reserve the right to refuse such requests.
SPECIMEN RETENTION – The Oregon State Arthropod Collection discourages the retention of its specimens for any reason. Still, we may permit specimen retention under specific cases: (1) retained specimens must be part of a series of duplicate specimens (taxonomically and geographically), (2) previously determined material (whether identified correctly or incorrectly) is unavailable for retention, (3) type specimens and ‘compared with type’ specimens are not available for retention, (4) all retained specimens must be deposited in another public institutional collection (i.e., they are not available for private collections).
Researchers may request an exchange of material; offering OSAC specimens (taxa or geographic forms) not currently present in our holdings. Exchanged specimens are still considered 'retentions' and must meet the four restrictions listed above.
PLEASE NOTE: Researchers wishing to retain specimens must return all of their borrowed specimens to OSAC at the end of their loan. However, they should indicate which specimens are desired for retention. After reviewing these specimens, if approved, we will de-accession them and return them to the researcher.
GRADUATE STUDENTS – Graduate students must submit a letter (or e-mail) from a professional taxonomist at their institution who will vouch for the return of their loan. OSAC reserves the right to refuse such loans.
BARCODE SYSTEM - Except in rare cases, each of the specimens or vial of specimens you will receive will be associated with an OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY barcode tag.
Each of these tags has a unique 9-digit identification number on its underside.
This unique identification number links each of our specimens and vials to our database that stores information about them (taxonomic, curatorial, biological etc.). Please take extreme care to keep these numbered tags in association with their respective specimens.
On pinned specimens, the barcode tag should remain as the BOTTOM most tag, with the code facing downward. If you add a determination or any other labels, please place these ABOVE the barcode tag so that it can be easily scanned.
IF you will be recording the label data from our specimens or vials, PLEASE INCLUDE THIS SERIAL NUMBER IN YOUR SPREADSHEET, DATABASE, or TEXT FILE.
OSAC specimen identification numbers are printed both with a ‘human readable’ font and a CODE128 scan-able font. We chose CODE128 because it is one of the most universally accepted 2D barcodes and therefore is readable by almost all barcode scanners - many of which are relatively inexpensive (< $150).
COLOR system: OSAC prints our barcodes for pinned specimens on several colors of paper (alcohol barcodes are always white). The colors corresponds to particular sub-collections within our holdings.
WHITE - generic OSAC identification tagsGREEN - specimens of the Western Forest Insect Collection
BLUE - specimens of the Melville H. Hatch Collection
RED - primary and secondary type material
GOLD - voucher specimens associated with experimental studies or research projects
*The loaning party retains the right of first publication of this sequence data for a grace period of 6 years (the duration of the initial loan + 3 years). OSU may request this sequence data prior to that time, but agrees not to publish or similarly make publically available this data until after the grace period has expired. Sequence data not made publically available on GenBank or via publication within 6 years will be considered shared data, and available for use and free dissemination by both parties.
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