University of Guam (University of Guam Herbarium)

Guided by its institutional strategic plan and recommendations from a recent survey of the Herbarium's collections, the University of Guam Herbarium (GUAM) will undertake a comprehensive series of activities to improve the long-term preservation of its plant specimens. Project activities will include increasing floor space and curation capacity by installing a space-saving mobile compactor; providing safe conditions for collections and permitting the continued growth of the collections by obtaining new cabinets and replacing broken cabinets; providing critical care to collections by curating the backlog of specimens and replacing acid covers and folders with new acid-free covers for all the specimens; and employing software to manage species and specimen data. GUAM is the largest herbarium in the western Pacific and the only herbarium in Micronesia, a region encompassing over 2,000 islands that extend over an area the size of the continental United States.