News from McWane Science Center

Here are some interesting links to various publications, online databases and other resources to be found at McWane Science Center.

Overview of McWane Collections on their newly designed Website

McWane has a new website.  Jun has been given three pages he maintains that are related to the McWane collection.  The first page provides a brief overview of the collection and the natural history exhibits.
http://www.mcwane.org/learn/the-mcwane-science-center-collection/mcwane-science-center-collection/

Online Database of Fossils at McWane

The second page is a link to his newly launched online database. "Only" 8500 items have been uploaded (out of the 500,000 items at McWane), but as it, it is still one of the largest online visual fossil databases in the world. Jun is constantly uploading specimens, so definitely check back often. http://www.mcwane.org/learn/the-mcwane-science-center-collection/explore-the-collection/

Published Research Papers on the McWane Collection

The third page has resources for professional researchers. On this page Jun has listed, by year, all the papers (peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed), abstracts, dissertations, and theses that have been published on the collection. Download links are included for all the papers that are open access. Jun tries to publish all of his papers online and open access, so most of those can be downloaded. Jun says to feel free to post any of these online papers to the BPS website, so that will happen over time.
http://www.mcwane.org/learn/the-mcwane-science-center-collection/professional-resources/

Published Research Papers on Alabama Fossils - Alabama Paleo Library in Dropbox

Jun Ebersole also hosts what he calls the Alabama Paleo Library. In a nutshell, he stores his paleo-related PDF's in a folder in DropBox. He catalogs all the papers in a searchable document and uses OCR on all the PDF's. Because they are in DropBox, he is able to share the library with anyone with a paid Dropbox account (since there are nearly 25GB's worth of papers, one needs the paid version of DropBox in order to accept the invitation).  At any rate, if anyone in BPS has the paid version, he is happy to share this resource with them. Jun pretty much has anything that has ever been published on fossils in Alabama (including some ridiculously rare and obscure items), plus literally hundreds of papers that are related to paleo in the state. Thus far he has uploaded 3100 or so PDF's and is constantly adding more.