[Nhcoll-l] difficult locality label

Tue Feb 15 15:46:05 EST 2022

Interesting to know that in the northeaster-most corner of Bavaria, in 
Hof (also called Bavarian-Siberia because of the cold winters), they 
developed such a nice tool; thanks for sharing, Doug!

Also a good source for old(er) place names are the historic maps that 
are provided online by the University of Texas, Austin: 
https://maps.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html
Larger farms, settlements or missionary stations can be found in them 
for some countries (occasionally, local spellings can be a bit 
'flexible'); but it's good to know in which areas of a country you 
should search to restrict the area you need to look up. Always good to 
check plausibility of results from old maps with modern spellings 
offered on other web resources, and to note the original source of 
information in the remarks field or similar in the database, so that the 
source is clear (and traceable).

Hope this is useful
Dirk

Am 15.02.2022 um 13:51 schrieb Callomon,Paul:
>
> I’ve scored some good leads to obscure/outdated/colloquial place names 
> and place/people collocations from newspapers.com, though you’ll need 
> a subscription to see the details. A remarkable number of 
> English-language newspapers from non-English-speaking countries are 
> now online, which can help with (for example) anglicized Chinese and 
> Pacific place names. Obituaries in local newspapers can be a gold 
> mine, as they often bring together a person’s name and the places they 
> once lived for the first and only time in print and thus online.
>
> Paul Callomon
>
> Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates//
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University***
>
> 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
> /prc44 at drexel.edu <mailto:prc44 at drexel.edu> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 
> 215-299-1170/
>
> *From:* Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> *On Behalf Of 
> *Douglas Yanega
> *Sent:* Monday, February 14, 2022 8:03 PM
> *To:* nhcoll <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
> *Subject:* [Nhcoll-l] difficult locality label
>
> *External.*
>
> While curating today, I came across a fair-sized series of specimens 
> with one of those locality labels that make you pull out your hair. It 
> typifies most of the worst of this sort of label, in its combination 
> of useless vagueness (the only recognizable place name is the country) 
> and hopeless specificity (it gives the name of a privately-held 
> property, rather than a town or some other place name that would 
> appear on a map).
>
> To wit:
>
> ZAMBIA
>
> “Amorotis Farm"
>
> 15.ii.1972, S.C. Cruickshank
>
> Host: on citrus
>
> Don't bother Googling; either the farm name is badly misspelled, or it 
> is no longer extant, and has never been recorded in a document that is 
> on the web. There is also a Mr. S.A. Cruickshank who works with 
> farmers in Zambia, but that's a different person entirely.
>
> It's not crucial for us to know more precisely (for genetic work, just 
> Zambia is probably sufficient), but it seems a shame to have the 
> *potential* to know exactly where these specimens are from but be 
> compelled to exclude them from georeferencing (a point with an error 
> radius of 700 kilometers is really more likely to confuse people than 
> be helpful, as so few people check error radii when consulting online 
> records).
>
> A disproportionate number of the specimen records of this general 
> nature in our collection are from ranches or farms, from many 
> different countries, and even within the US. They are, not 
> surprisingly, almost impossible to track down once they change hands 
> or go defunct (e.g. "6 mi W Stanton Ranch HQ, Santa Cruz Island", 
> which is not helpful when the ranch was a few miles in diameter and 
> the few buildings were razed or repurposed decades ago), and not 
> always trivial to locate even if still operating.
>
> Asking here is a long shot, but I'd also be curious as to any tricks 
> people might know for this type of locality (ranches and farms), even 
> if it doesn't solve this particular case. I do know, and make frequent 
> use of, the Fuzzy Gazetteer 
> (http://isodp.hof-university.de/fuzzyg/query/ 
> <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fisodp.hof-university.de%2Ffuzzyg%2Fquery%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cprc44%40drexel.edu%7Cfb76d3125f064e97f3c108d9f01edd8d%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C1%7C637804837664913299%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=RII%2FGhIDj9gDfkO6Mxfj2zMrQV71rleaoCg12I3VGb4%3D&reserved=0>), 
> but that's more useful for mistranscriptions or bad handwritten 
> labels. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's a very helpful tool.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- 
> 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://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html  <https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=04%7C01%7Cprc44%40drexel.edu%7Cfb76d3125f064e97f3c108d9f01edd8d%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C1%7C637804837665069548%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=xxK%2B0qyDzAlrHoJA%2BMzNiTlNjabcNm3cy2%2BgoyuoMlU%3D&reserved=0>
>    "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>          is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82
>
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-- 

Dirk Neumann

Tel: 089 / 8107-111
Fax: 089 / 8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de

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Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns
Zoologische Staatssammlung München
Dirk Neumann, Sektion Ichthyologie / DNA-Storage
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81247 München

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---------

Dirk Neumann

Tel: +49-89-8107-111
Fax: +49-89-8107-300
neumann(a)snsb.de

postal address:

Bavarian Natural History Collections
The Bavarian State Collection of Zoology
Dirk Neumann, Section Ichthyology / DNA-Storage
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