[Nhcoll-l] Jar Numbering Systems

Wed Aug 2 04:03:17 EDT 2017

Dear Emily,

this is surely a useful approach e.g. if you aim to individualise 
tissued specimens; we currently have > 20,000 individualised specimens 
in our jars.

However, your database should be capable to manage your jar based 
specimen entries and associated individuals / individualised parts 
thereof (which usually are stored at different locations, e.g. tissues 
in - 25°C and DNAs in -80°C or other deep freezing units).

It is not in all cases useful to apply tags to all specimens, especially 
if they are too small or delicate, because hard labels, thus as thermal 
ribbon based labels, potentially damage fins or scales. Also, such 
labels are very difficult to apply to specimens below 3 cm total length. 
We prefer paper based gill labels, one the one hand to avoid any 
(potential) deterioration issues of plastics in alcohol, on the other to 
limit potential damage to specimens (especially if specimens are 
crowding inside jars).

The other option to individualise specimens would be to separate them 
into sufficient large, tight closing high-quality centrifuge tubes 
(minimum 50 ml total volume) , which should be sealed with parafilm and 
then be placed into glass jars, to create a controlled / closed 
micro-environment inside the jar (because PE-tubes are highly permeable 
for oxygen and other gases). Smaller voucher specimens should be stored 
in tissue tubes in frozen condition. If there are additional specimens 
from the same collection event for example stored in your main 
collection, you could link them relationally in your database to 
increase searchability.

As Andrew already pointed out it is useful to have a full record of 
individual (tissue) numbers included in jars on the respective specimen 
labels for those jars.

Hope this helps
Dirk

Am 01.08.2017 um 18:24 schrieb Emily M. Braker:
>
> Hi All,
>
> We are planning to rehouse and inventory our Herpetology collection 
> which will include implementing a container-level specimen tracking 
> system. All catalog numbers in a jar will be linked to a unique 
> container ID to increase findability, especially for large taxonomic 
> series that span multiple jars within a given geographic region.
>
> I am interested to know what other collections have done regarding a 
> jar numbering systems (sequential? sequential within taxon? other?). 
> Or, if you use barcodes for tracking containers, have you encountered 
> issues with scanning through glass? We will be adding thermal labels 
> to each jar to replace our existing external jar tag that lists 
> species and locality (county-level resolution). Along these lines, 
> does anyone go so far as listing the catalog numbers of specimens 
> stored within the same jar on their thermal labels? We are hoping to 
> streamline the process of searching through multiple jars and hundreds 
> of specimens to find the distinguished few that are requested to go on 
> loan. I’d welcome any suggestions or advice.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Emily
>
> Emily Braker
>
> Vertebrate Collections Manager, Zoology Section
>
> University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
>
> 265 UCB, Bruce Curtis Building
>
> Boulder, CO 80309-0218
>
> Phone: 303-492-8466
>
>
>
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Dirk Neumann

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