The library lives along one wall of our conference room.
In the BEC we have a conference room, which is used by many Zoo departments for meetings. It’s also the darkest, most enclosed room in the office section, so this is where our overnight teachers usually choose to sleep. One of the shorter walls is covered by shelves – this is our library, which I keep organized and orderly with the help of my coworkers. Other than the library and camp T-shirts on the walls, our conference room is not too different than any other conference room in any other office.
We’ll end our tour with two storage rooms that are more exciting than your average closet: the biofact rooms. Biofact is a compound word that we use to describe anything non-living that we use for our programs. It’s a shortening of the phrase “biological artifact.”
Our mammal biofact room, with a wide array of skulls and other artifacts
These biofacts include everything from shed feathers and preserved poop to skins and skulls saved from the real thing. About half of the skulls and other bones in our collection are real; the rest are plastic models. The real items are from a couple different sources. Some were saved from our animals when they passed away, some were confiscated items from CITES-listed endangered species, and some were donated by private citizens or other organizations.
We use these items in our classes and programs. It’s much easier to illustrate the difference between herbivore and carnivore teeth with skulls of the animals, for example, and most people will never get a chance to touch a live sea turtle or tiger. Biofacts in our collection are treated with respect; they are scientific specimens that (for some) were once living animals and they are stored and handled as such.
Our non-mammal biofact room, including the bins of puppets along the floor
There are two biofact rooms: the larger one is taken up almost entirely by mammal biofacts. We have a lot of mammal items; many of them are quite large. The smaller biofact room houses everything else; our reptile items are also fairly numerous, but much smaller, requiring less space. Our bird collection is respectable, although as a bird nerd I wish it were a bit more extensive, and we also have some fish, amphibian, and invertebrate mounts and models. There are bins on the floor all the way around the room for puppets. Puppets are fun for younger audiences – it is often easier to demonstrate movement with a puppet, and skulls are hard to understand for many little ones. They can’t picture where the eyes or nose would go, so a puppet can show what a skull can’t. Just like with the biofacts, we have more mammal puppets than anything else. Bears and lions just seem to be more popular as toys than hornbills or lizards.
I hope you’ve enjoyed our tour of the Brown Education Center! Now that you’ve seen our building, maybe you’ll join us for one of our many programs and get a chance to experience it in person.
