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Hello, I am the executive director of the West Virginia Botanic Garden in Morgantown. Since my undergraduate paleobotany class I took long ago, I've had an interest in local fossils and the natural history story they tell. Of course, West Virginia is known for coal, but I've long wanted to tell a richer story of the state's underground forests at the state's flagship public garden. We do not have an indoor space for an exhibit, which makes development more difficult. It has to be designed to face the elements and secure fossil artifacts so they don't get stolen. Thanks to a small grant, I'm finally able to get moving on production of a custom panel with locked shadow boxes. I couldn't be more excited! The panel will be 6' wide by about 3' tall mounted to posts. As I said, there will be 8x8" shadow boxes made of aluminum attached to the back. An acrylic window at the front and on the top will allow light in. Each box will be lockable. All fossils will come from my personal collection. Even though a couple of the specimens are not ideal, I can easily replace them when I find better pieces. Now, here is where you all come in! As I said, I only had one undergrad course. With that and a handful of books, I know enough to seem like I know what I'm talking about. But I'm humble and am nervous about putting my draft into production where tens of thousands of visitors will see potentially incorrect information. I have sent the draft panel to public agency officials and some local university folks, but have not heard anything back. In trying to get this thing done sooner rather than later, I could really use some critical editing help!!! You won't hurt my feelings. I'm a little reluctant to just post the draft panel image up here for fear of a mountain of possibly conflicting advice, but perhaps that's the best way to do this. My education director helped with the draft since she has expertise in interpretive signage, but she can't help with the substantive content. The gray areas are where the windows will be. I have something that will represent each of the areas. My Sigillaria fossils are pretty awful and I'm not 100% certain any of them are actually of that, but I'll augment it by putting one of my good Stigmaria pieces in with it instead of over with Lepidodendron. My only trilobyte is like 1/2" big, so the animal display will probably have a nice crinoid and a really nice Lithostrotionella piece. (Note: images were purchased legally) Fire away!
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