[Nhcoll-l] curatorial activities, annual reporting

[Shorthouse, David]

All -

I have been experimenting with how to best attribute specimens to
collectors and determiners as a first pass to a more ambitious
extension to the Darwin Core standard. See the final recommendations
for the broader RDA/TDWG Attribution Metadata Working Group
initiative: https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00029. I'm also keen to adopt
strategies that have the greatest potential to embed curatorial
activities in the academic landscape. Authentication through and
association with the not-for-profit ORCID is a logical choice.

Have a poke around https://bloodhound.shorthouse.net/. I process
upward of 180M specimen records from GBIF for this proof-of-concept &
harvest affiliations from ORCID profiles. Try logging in, "claiming"
your specimens, and making your profile public if you so choose. We
can imagine plenty of services that could emerge from this (eg
authority look-ups), but we absolutely must build infrastructure that
stitches the unequivocal identity of people to their activities in a
way that squarely puts users in control & is designed for their
benefit.

One way to help guide development of solutions that attribute
curatorial activities is to consider how museum staff report on their
performance to their employers. If we have to count things as a metric
of our performance, perhaps we ought to standardize this across
institutions & ideally, it should be automated. Are you required to
submit quarterly, annual performance reports to your employer? Are
there line items for numbers of specimens deposited, identified,
curated, digitized, other? Has your employer provided a standard
template? Are you able to provide suggestions on what that template
contains? Is there a reward system at your institution for curatorial
activities? If your employer does require you to complete a quarterly,
annual, or other periodic performance review, please send me a blank
version. I'd like to compile these & present a summary for the
upcoming SPNHC meetings in Chicago.

Thanks,

David P. Shorthouse