If the dinosaurs in the Field Museum could talk, they would have a lot to say about their past. But since they can’t, museum volunteers are there to interpret their prehistoric stories.
As many as 450 volunteers assist the Field Museum staff in anthropology, botany, geology and zoology, as well as in the library, collections and photography areas.
Volunteers in the Arthur Rubloff Halls of Life Over Time exhibit commit to six hours at least one weekday a week or two weekend days a month, helping with the museum collections, assisting in ongoing museum research and making the exhibits come to life for visitors.
The volunteers are selected from mailing lists of fossil fans and dinosaur enthusiasts who have attended local fossil digs, as well as other interested parties. They must undertake an extensive 17-week training program as part of their commitment. Once a week from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., volunteers attend lectures, meet with museum curators, explore the halls and collections, view films, slide shows, and study the vast subject matter that began with two dinosaurs and the Charles Knights dinosaur paintings.
During the first 13 weeks of the 17-week training course, volunteers travel back in time, covering the period from the beginning of life to the extinction of the dinosaur. The last four weeks are spent learning about life after the dinosaurs, the mammals’ evolution and the emergence of humans.
The volunteers also must be well versed on invertebrate paleontology, meteorites, amphibians and early reptiles.
“The volunteers give light to the details, they help tell the story, give anecdotes and gems of information that they have gleaned themselves,” explained Peter Laraba, the museum’s geology subject matter specialist.
“Our volunteers provide the interpretation, the voice of the objects, the answers to questions,” said Anita Morgan, the museum’s volunteer coordinator. “They are able to point out things. There might be subtle things you would without the volunteers there. Our hall doesn’t have the voice or the personal touch that our volunteers do.”
And the volunteers also learn from visitors, especially children.
“Children see things through unbiased eyes,” says Dennis Kinzig, 54, an Ameritech performance productivity consultant by day and a Life Over Time weekend volunteer. “They make connections that adults can’t. They see the exhibit with such crystal-clear clarity. They make cross connections and ask better questions than some adults. They are intuitively brilliant.”
“Every day,” says Kinzig, “I learn lots of things. People may not be able to say that in their own jobs; but I can honestly say that every day, I learn something new here.”
Kinzig takes pride in his amateur paleontologist status, in his work in the halls, and in the fact that his hobby may affect future friends of the dinosaurs. He is also involved in the museum’s yearlong partnership with the University of Chicago, sampling soil from a Central Montana fossil dig dating back 73 million years.
“Scientists have only discovered less than one percent of the discoverable dinosaurs. They really know so little about them. This exhibit will allow research for the next 1,000 years,” predicts Kinzig.
Geologist Laraba makes a habit to “hang back” and observe the interactions between volunteers and visitors, making certain that they are true to the research and to their service of the public. It often “amazes” him when he sees volunteers working as teams, running everything from the sign-up sheets at their hall positions, to lunch schedules, to running the exhibit and finding hidden treasures within the walls and themselves.
Laraba believes a great deal of the exhibit’s success rests with the volunteers.
“The general public really doesn’t know the difference between a curator or a hall facilitator, so they must be well-equipped and ready for anything. We make sure their needs are met,” says Laraba.
Grace Takata, a 70-year-old from Park Forest, doubles as a Rice Research Library assistant and a Life Over Time volunteer fulfilling her own need to pay back the museum for what it has given her and her family throughout the years.
“I’ve always been interested in dinosaurs, in science and in evolution,” said Takata, whose late husband was a physicist and her son is a biologist.
Takata helps out in the Coal Forest and the Ice Age Hall and everywhere in between, and she will not allow anyone to leave the museum’s exhibit without seeing the mastodon jaw that was found on the Stevenson Expressway during recent construction.
“They depend on us to do all the things we do. I’m sure they would miss all of us if we weren’t here.”
