Zachary Falin, collection manager for entomology at the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center at Snow Hall, displays a collection of scarab beetles in one of the 6,500 drawers in the collection at Snow Hall. Kansas University's biodiversity collections, including entomology items, will be moved out of Snow Hall to the old Printing Services building on west campus.

The fuzz and the buzz are moving to a new home at Kansas University.

The KU Public Safety Office and some Natural History Museum specimens — including about 4 million dead insects — will take over the 32,000-square-foot west campus building that currently holds Printing Services, a department that is closing this spring.

Jordan Yochim, assistant director for administration at the museum, said the new collection space was desperately needed. He said invertebrate paleontology collections also would be stored on west campus, along with some other collections that will be moved.

In all, the museum has 7 million specimens found in Dyche, Snow, Lindley, Lippincott and Haworth halls on the main campus and Bridwell Hall on west campus.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” Yochim said. “We’re bleeding out into the hallways. We’re in dire need of space.”

These scarab beetles are part of the 4.4 million specimens stored in the cabinets and drawers of Snow Hall.

Capt. Schuyler Bailey, a spokesman for the KU Public Safety Office, referred questions about his department’s move to Ralph Oliver, the office’s director. Oliver was out of town Monday.

But Don Steeples, vice provost for scholarly support, said the new location would provide expanded office space and a larger locker room, in addition to offices and space for dispatchers. The Public Safety Office will occupy about 7,000 square feet of the Printing Services building, about 2,000 square feet larger than its current space in Carruth-O’Leary Hall.

“It’s really crowded,” Steeples said. “Of all the places I’ve toured on campus in the last 2 1/2 years (when he became vice provost), the police department is probably the one that you’d get most claustrophobic in.”

He said renovations on the Printing Services building, which has yet to be renamed, would get under way later this year. Move-in dates are set between spring 2006 and August 2006, he said.

Steeples said the move would create a domino effect of other campus moves in the future. For example, the economics department will be moving from Summerfield Hall to Snow Hall, where the insects have been housed.