“We want everyone to know what’s here so they can come and use it,” she said.

Project co-manager Laura Abraczinskas said the goal of the project is to eventually update all of the museum’s databases and post them online. The museum has 110,000 vertebrate specimens, and this year the 36,100 fish and 18,600 reptile and amphibian specimens will be updated, along with 4,200 vertebrate fossils. The specimens include skeletons, skins and whole animals preserved in jars.

“What we’re trying to do is clean up and standardize our data,” she said.

Some names and spellings have changed since the specimens were catalogued, she said.

“I have things that say ‘Dakota Territory.’ How do I map that today?” Abraczinskas said. “Sometimes county names are spelled wrong. That name isn’t going to come up if someone does a search.”

The database will include the scientific name, a description and when and where the specimen was collected, she said.

Swanson said the cultural history databases already have been updated. She said the museum has about 125,000 cultural history objects, including textiles and clothes, artwork, weapons and tools. About 25,000 of those are the ethnographic objects from overseas. All of the ethnographic objects will be photographed, but only 10,000 representative photos will be posted online.

“We’ll be moving into something new that we haven’t done before,” she said. “This is like the beginning of a new set of projects.”

Abraczinskas said the databases are used for research. The vertebrate databases can be used for comparing climate information and changes in wildlife, she said.

“Say you were studying fish in the Red Cedar River. If you wanted to know what was in there forty years ago, you could check our database,” she said.

Kevin O’Connell, Congressional Affairs Officer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, said the grant came from the Museums for America project. Museums for America makes awards to nonprofit museums not owned by the federal government for exhibitions and education, policy and training, or collections stewardship. It also requires museums to provide matching funds.

“(Requiring matching funds) leverages federal funds. We’re trying to get as much as possible out of taxpayer dollars,” he said.

Swanson said the museum came up with the $136,356 in matching funds by donating staff time.

Abraczinskas said the museum hired two temporary staff for earlier database work who will stay on the for the 18 months required to do these updates. It also will hire two students to work with the vertebrate collections and one for the cultural collections, she said.

Bryan Thomas, spokesman for Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the grant will help the museum make its collections available for all.

“It speaks well of the MSU Museum that it received such a large grant in this competitive program,” he said.