“We knew most of it would be in scope for us and potentially put on display or used in student lectures. It’s writing, it’s science, it’s photography,” said Cornell, who provided the students with a background on the MNHC and Gabriel before the inventory began. Determining what was worth keeping and what was out of scope for the MNHC – and its focus on the natural wonders of the West – would be the challenge. Zimmer and Cornell knew from a natural history perspective there would be gems filed away in the hundreds of sleeves assembled by Gabriel, an alumnus of UM’s College of Forestry and longtime MNHC supporter. UM Visiting Professor Eric Zimmer and his students approached the collection as valuable snapshots of the natural environment from several decades ago. “We brainstormed ideas, and when I brought up the Gabriel collection Eric’s eyes lit up. “It was perfect,” MNHC Collections Manager Alyssa Cornell said of Zimmer’s timing. They said, ‘Yeah, we have these boxes of materials, and we’d like to get a handle on what’s all there and figure out what to do with it.’” “I reached out the center,” Zimmer recalls, “and told them about this class and just asked if there was something we could do to help them out and support their mission. Herman William “Bill” Gabriel, which the MNHC, despite a strong desire, didn’t have the staff to catalog. The Montana Natural History Center meanwhile had been sitting for two years on a collection of around 75,000 slides – 86 boxes worth – donated by the estate of nature enthusiast and photographer Dr. Environmental History Class could tackle.
Last winter, Professor Eric Zimmer, a visiting scholar of the American West in the University of Montana’s History Department, was looking for a chunky project that students in his spring U.S.
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