[NHCOLL-L:2201] Numbering specimens

[Raney Morrison]

Please excuse the cross-posting.
 
I work for a small natural history museum.  We have a very extensive collection of mounted specimens- birds, mammals, reptiles, and insects- many of which date to the late 1800's.  I'm the first professionally trained collections manager the museum has ever had.  In the past no one has documented donations of natural history specimens, thus these collections have no numbers, no deed of gift, or any other records.  Some of the birds have an AOU number based on a list that was made in the 70's; but if we have 7 robins, there's no individual numbers for the specimens.  We also have a list of specimens that was part of the original collection that came to the museum in 1890, but it has not been updated as to specimens that have been deaccessioned, added since, or broken up (Victorian bird trees were often disassembled and the individual specimen was mounted on it's own).  
I'm an anthropologist, and don't really know how to go about developing a numbering system for this extensive collection (many thousands of specimens).  Would you number everything with the same tri-nomial system and pick an arbitrary date to start from?  Would you number all the birds under one system, mammals under another, etc, etc?  Would you try and retrace specimens in the limited records we do have and match them to a date and donor?  Any guidelines would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Raney Bench
Collections Manager 
Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium
St. Johnsbury, VT 05819



---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/private/nhcoll-l/attachments/20040209/4aa76bc7/attachment.html