The University of Northern Iowa community can delve and learn about different parts of the world, thanks to a collection of artifacts that Rod Library is displaying on the first floor. The exhibit, “Treasures: A Sampling of the UNI Museums Collection” includes jewelry, a yearbook from 1905, pottery and a Chihuahua statue. Artifacts come from places such as Morocco, Indonesia, Egypt and Peru.

“Our initial message with the current display is to underscore the variety of the collections and the usefulness they may have to students as they engage in class assignments and presentations,” said Katherine Martin, head of collections and museums.

The pieces in these exhibits used to be on display at the UNI Museums, located on Hudson Road. However, the museum closed in June 2012, due to the building’s maintenance and as an effect of the other reductions and cuts UNI made in that year, said Martin.

Since the museum’s closure, Rod Library has taken over management of the museum’s collections.

The current exhibit is only a small peek into what the UNI Museums collection has to offer. Martin said there about 110,000 artifacts the museum has collected since 1892.

“There was a small scientific collection, sometimes referred to as the ‘cabinet of curiosities,’ that supported largely biology and geology, and it grew from there,” Martin said. “Many of the early additions were objects collected by or otherwise obtained by university faculty who were instrumental in developing and leading the museum.”

Martin said there are now artifacts from four different fields, including anthropology/world cultures, history, geology and biology.

The exhibits are a way to display some of these artifacts to the public.

“We … thought that to both remind those who were familiar with the museum, or to introduce those who were not to the depth and breadth of our collections, that we would do the first exhibit on the treasures, … a sample of the museum collections,” Martin said.

As of now, Martin said, many of the artifacts are still stored at the museum, and there is no set move-out date.

She said the library is trying to get other departments involved in planning future exhibits. Currently, it is working with the Department of Earth Science on a display involving mammoths and mastodons. There has also been talk about a World War I exhibit.

“We do want to involve faculty in the planning of the exhibits and the mounting of the exhibits as much as possible,” Martin said. “And I hope that in the spring and after that we can begin to involve students more in the museum.”

The current exhibit will close Feb. 28.