Request Material

The Mineralogical and Geological Museum at Harvard University will make specimens and high quality photographs of specimens from the collection available to qualified requestors for loans, destructive research, and publication upon submission and approval of written requests. 

All requests should be sent by e-mail or mail with completed forms to museum staff at:

E-mail: geomus@fas.harvard.edu
Mail: Mineralogical and Geological Museum, Harvard University
24 Oxford Street
Cambridge, MA 02138

Museum staff will review and approve requests as quickly as possible, but requestors should expect to wait up to two weeks for a response. Factors taken into consideration when approving a loan or request for destructive analysis include scarcity of the specimens, quantity being requested, and the demand for the requested specimens.

Mineral Standards

For those interested in the Harvard University mineral standard sets described in:

McGuire et al. (1992) Mineral standards for electron microprobe analysis of oxygen. American Mineralogist 77, 1087-1091

Dyar et al. (2001) Reference minerals for microanalysis of light elements. Geostandards Newsletter25, 441-463

Please contact IAGeo Ltd for more information about obtaining standards.

 

Guidelines for destructive meteorites requests at MGMH

  1. Meteorites requests will be subject to a review cycle at the beginning of every semester in the Fall (last business day of September) and Spring (last business day of February).
  2. The remaining mass of the requested meteorite other than small rare meteorites after allocation must be at least 2/3 of the original mass.
  3. The mass of small rare meteorites (less than 50 grams) after allocation must be at least 80% of the original mass. Rare meteorites are defined as meteorites other than type 4-6 ordinary chondrites, including rare type portions of large meteorites.
  4. Allocations of any rare meteorite will generally be limited to samples less than 1 gram and less than 3 grams for other meteorites.
  5. Requests without producing a full-length publication within two years will be reviewed by the museum committee at the review cycle prior to any more material allocation.
  6. Any small meteorite (less than 5 grams) will not be, in general, loaned out.
  7. Requests will be allocated to only one lab per institution.
  8. Requests are limited to no more than 10 samples per request/review cycle.
  9. Requests are limited to 10 grams per allocation, and 20 grams in total per requestor.
  10. Promptly upon completion of the proposed research, unused or remaining meteorite samples must be returned to MGMH