[Nhcoll-l] NSC Alliance Washington Report - READ THIS ONE!

[Doug Yanega]

On 2/17/15 3:16 PM, Brown, Matthew A wrote:
>> Are you really going to take the time to go back through your collections - every item! - to determine what came from  DOI-managed public lands - ever - even though not georeferenced that precisely at the time collected, even though the exact site may or may not have been DOI-managed public land at the time?
> Um... yes.  I'd be a pretty poor steward if I couldn't be accountable for what my institution holds in our public trust collections.
>
Matthew: do you have over 3 million specimens in your collection that 
have not yet been databased or georeferenced? WE do. We've done 
databasing of legacy material, and it takes about 10 minutes per 
specimen, allowing for a high proportion of duplicate records. It would 
therefore take approximately 250 years for a full-time technician to 
database the entire holdings here, assuming we add no new material over 
that time. I've been here 15 years, and have managed to add unique 
numbers to about 10% of our holdings in that time, only a fraction of 
those with complete data capture. Does that mean I'm a poor steward, or 
*could it possibly be* that the proposed regulations are unreasonable 
when applied to all types of collections, especially arthropods? Given 
that arthropods comprise something like 99% of biodiversity on US public 
lands, I think the negative impact on arthropod collections is a bit 
more significant in the grand scheme, no?

Sincerely,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cache.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=AwIC-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=C8clVdShu0aw5WQqUeIHjo7xRlt6AXXpBVXBSvLHVFM&s=kfTheqIMclLid-YmwCTgqp3NeSpNIOxVo4VYOagt4yc&e= 
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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