[Nhcoll-l] Unique IDs for museum objects versus specimens

[Dirk Neumann]

Hi all,

don't want to add lengthy comments, so just briefly:

The entering into force of the Nagoya Protocol stipulates specific 
reporting requirements, for those *collections based in countries that 
ratified the NP*. Among other, /*unique identifiers* /allowing tracing 
and origin of genetic resources *should be applied soon.* Application of 
unique identifiers will be part of and further detailed in the reporting 
obligations of respective countries.

To confirm previous comments: yes, we do need a flexible system that 
allows application of /unique identifiers/  to identify batch samples, 
unsorted materials, etc. and /unique/ should not be confused with 
identifiers for individual specimens (as some political decision makers 
did during discussions towards the European ABS-legislation).

Unique identifiers should be unique - many molecular barcoding / 
digitalisation projects apply various kinds of barcodes, without testing 
if these are really unique (a high probability rate that barcodes would 
surely be not duplicated is not sufficient in this context).

Any barcode or decimal numbering is */not unique/*, because "123456.077" 
might appear as number in various collections or museums, may perfectly 
translates into other types of numberings (e.g. telephone / insurance / 
account numbers), and even adding an abbreviation for the institute , 
e.g. INST-123456.077 might
a) not result in a be unique ID inside this museum, e.g. if various 
collections / sections inside this museum use a similar numbering 
system, e.g. compinations of accession dates & specimen numbers, as John 
suggested (2014.11.3)
b) not be unique globally for natural history specimens, unless we do 
have a obligatory list of Museum abbreviations that excludes any 
duplications

Similar applies e.g. for GenBank numbers; GenBank numbering might be 
unique inside GenBank, but the encoding does not allow to decipher in 
which collection the corresponding specimen is deposited.

This adds an second field that should be considered in this discussion, 
how can we link /unique identifiers /with /unique museum references./ We 
need a kind of master ID, especially for the tissue and DNA collections 
and publication of samples stored in these collections.

Sadly, this receives limited attention at the moment, even though many 
barcoding & digitisation projects outbid each other to gather & publish 
specimen data. I would appreciate if we could enter a active discussion 
how to deal with this.

All the best
Dirk




Am 14.08.2014 22:55, schrieb Colin Favret:
> Thank you to everyone participating in this interesting discussion. 
> I'm at least relieved to know that there is no community standard, 
> yet, and so I'm not off kilter having developed my own solution. As I 
> understand it, palaeontologists assign separate unique identifiers to 
> the different fossil specimens in/on a single object (?). And Specify 
> seeks a solution to disambiguate "Containers" from specimens.
>
> But unique identifiers referring to museum objects or specimens are 
> not "dumb" in the same way that they are for localities, collection 
> events, taxa, etc. They refer to physical objects located in a 
> collection that bear a label with that unique identifier. That unique 
> identifier is thus part of the object retrieval process for collection 
> users, in addition to being for data retrieval.
>
> So can we envision a system where the unique identifier for the 77th 
> specimen on a microscope slide can also be used as part of the object 
> retrieval process? Or have we decided that, given a unique identifier 
> for the 77th specimen, I'm better off having to go to the database to 
> reference the museum object's ID before heading into the compactors? 
> Does anyone have a significant objection to the decimal 
> INST-123456.077 to uniquely refer to the 77th specimen in/on museum 
> object INST-123456?
>
> Thanks for the continued discussion!
>
> Colin
>
>
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-- 
Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

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---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
email: Dirk.Neumann(a)zsm.mwn.de

postal address:

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