campus map was scanned using a Microtek ScanMaker IIXE and the image imported into MacDraw II. As a classroom assignment, campus plant materials were inventoried, entered into FileMaker Pro 2.1, a database manager, characterized and assigned locations. and cultivar information is critical to optimizing this resource.

In teaching a course in landscape plant materials, the landscape plants which exist on campus are an important and accessible resource. The collections in universities are in urgent need of national and international appreciation, cooperation projects and funding to guarantee their long-term preservation. The lack of interest of researchers in smaller collections outside national institutions and the recent lack of investment by the university for the preservation and scientific evaluation of its zoological heritage will lead to a progressive loss of the material not used for public exhibitions. Skulls and skeletons are also on display, and a ‘Belgian fauna’ room is devoted to local birds. Many specimens of the University of Liège bird collection are exhibited in systematic order in the ‘world wide diversity presentation’. The presence of type specimens has not yet been checked.

The museum also houses a few specimens of threatened or extinct species. As we achieved to computerise the collections in a FileMaker Pro database, statistics by taxonomy, geographical origin or other criteria can be extracted. Since the 1970s, new specimens added to the collection are either gifts from private collections or fresh birds found dead. At present, some 6,000 avian specimens are recorded as mounted skins, skeletons, skulls, eggs or organs preserved in alcohol. Later, between 18, Edouard Van Beneden bought Belgian birds. Between 18, Theodore Lacordaire acquired skins from South-East Asia through Francis Laporte Comte de Castelnau. Most birds in the Liège Museum of Zoology have been collected during the 19th century.

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