USNM Curators Annual Reports - Department of Fishes: Annual Report, 1885

Though there is plenty of information about collections care and new accessions in curators’ reports, information about specimens on exhibition is sometimes rare. In the 1885 report from the Department of Fishes, Tarleton H. Bean noted that there were 20,400 specimens on exhibition. He also mentions attaching descriptive labels to an exhibit in New Orleans. Aid the Archives in transcribing sources to reveal the changing ways Smithsonian curators did their work and how they organized their collections. To learn more about this collection, check out the finding aid.