The Strickland Entomological Museum was named in honor and in memory of Dr. E. H. Strickland, who founded the Department of Entomology in 1922, and within a few years thereafter established the insect collection. The Museum's holdings are in two rooms in the Biological Sciences Building.

Approximately one million specimens are included, preserved dry on pins; in vials, in alcohol; or in Canada balsam, on microscope slides. The pinned specimens are in cardboard trays, housed in about 1200 wooden, glass topped drawers. The drawers are in wooden or steel cabinets, each of which is labelled as to contents.

The Kenneth Bowman Collection of Lepidoptera, which is part of the Research Collection, contains pinned specimens representing most of the species of butterflies and moths known from Alberta. The F.S. Carr Collection of Coleoptera is housed in approximately 300 drawers.

The Alberta Reference Collection includes a few representatives (one or two) of many of the species known to occur in this province. The collection is used primarily as an aid in identifying local species.

Except for the carabids, the collections are arranged in systematic order, according to recent textbooks, catalogues and checklists, as appropriate. The Carabidae are organized by zoogeographical region, and then systematically, within each region.

Material from both the Research and Reference Collections is available for loan and study by those who are preparing taxonomic revisions. Primary type material based on Strickland Museum specimens is not retained here, as a matter of policy. Rather, it is deposited in appropriate national or major regional museums.

The Strickland Museum offers excellent examples of how lepidopterists can contribute toward building photographic and informational content of museum websites and outreach programs, as well as building the specimen holdings. Gary Anweiler (Edmonton) and Charles Bird (Erskine) have for many years been active collectors in Alberta. Both plan to or already have contributed personally collected material to the museum. They have also contributed voluminous label data to the museum's database, as well as photographs and text for many species pages that make the museum's website so much more valuable to the public. As we continue to build out the MPG system of species pages we will be linking to the pages at the E. H. Strickland Museum.

The photographs appearing here were almost all taken by Gary Anweiler or Charles Bird. In some cases they were taken by university students who create "Species Pages as Termpapers," one of many innovative programs at The Strickland. Current or former students having photographs on these pages include Brett Bodeux, Lisa Lumley, Vazrick Nazari and Thomas Simonsen.