The two most common questions the PCM Collection staff receives are:

“Where is the collection now that the Panama Canal Museum has closed?”

The collection is housed in two locations:

1.)    Larger, three dimensional items are housed at the Interim Library Facility, which is an offsite storage facility , about 6 miles from campus.

2.)    Most two dimensional items, such as papers, books, photographs, newspapers, documents, and other small ephemera are kept at the Smathers Library on campus.

Here at the library, the PCM Collection now functions as a research collection.  This means that the materials do not circulate and must be used in the Special Collections Reading Room because these materials require special handling and security precautions to ensure their preservation.

This also means that there is no permanent exhibit space for the PCM materials.

“If there is no permanent exhibit space, how is the collection being used?”

A research collection is just what it sounds like—a collection of books and other objects used for research.

Undergraduate or graduate students may reference these materials for a research paper about the Panama Canal.  Professors may select items to use as a compliment to their course instruction.  And visiting researchers from all over the world may also access PCM Collection materials to supplement their own research.

Any student, professor, or researcher can request that PCM Collection items be brought to the Reading Room, where they can be handled, measured, photographed, or examined up close.

This semester, students in the Museum Studies graduate program are accessing the PCM Collection as a part of their Exhibitions Seminar course.  They are using these materials to curate a proposal for one of the Centennial Exhibits that will be installed next fall.

The way these students are accessing these PCM Collection materials is a great example of the way the collection will continue to be used by students, faculty, and researchers at the University of Florida.