[Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Re: hard copy accessions/specimen register

Tue Jan 30 16:28:56 EST 2024

.. and this also applies for good field notes. Especially, when you work in remote areas. e.g. in Africa. While I always had a computer with me, I copied in the evening my handwritten locality notes and specifically tissue sample lists I prepared during the day. More then once I found myself in the situation that I could (and had to) rely on my handwritten files when accessioning the material back home in the collection.

These documents should be filed as ordinary accession files - which they are. And compared to my excel entries, I could trace and reconstruct glitches in my field lists more easily. We taught our students in the field always to rely on the pencil as your best friend.

Maybe worth adding...

With best wishes
Dirk

Am 29.01.2024 um 19:20 schrieb John E Simmons:
There are several good reasons to keep a bound register for accessions, including permanence, security, legal standing, and sustainability.

The problem with databases (and all other information stored electronically) is that it is not permanent or secure. Ultimately, whether it is maintained on a limited-access hard drive or in cloud storage, all electronic information storage is based on the use of plastic resins and magnetized metallic particles, neither of which are permanent, and neither of which will endure as long as acid-free paper and good ink. The only way to keep electronic information readable is to re-format the data every few years, which is extraordinarily expensive over time, and which will result in data loss with repeated software and hardware changes. Re-formatting of electronic information is rarely a budget line in museums.

A hand-written, bound ledger of accession information has clear legal standing because a bound ledger is very difficult to alter without leaving physical evidence behind; by contrast, electronic files are very easy to change without a trace. Should an institution ever have a legal issue that involves proof of acquisition, the bound ledger of accessions will be a far more supportive document than an electronic file.

It is important to emphasize that at present, there is no way to preserve electronically stored information for the next 20 or 30 years, much less several hundred years in the future, but we know that properly cared for paper documents will last at least 500 years. An example: Walter Isaacson wrote biographies of both Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci, and Issacson has pointed out that 7,200 pages of Leonardo’s notebooks that are extant (about a quarter of the pages of the original notebooks) is “a higher percentage after five hundred years than the percentage of Steve Job’s emails and digital documents from the 1990s that he and I were able to retrieve.”

Add to this that printing electron information on paper using available desktop printers does not produce a permanent copy. Desktop laser printers do not produce the same quality copy as do commercial laser printers, and no laser printing technology equals the permanence of letterpress printing or hand-writing on acid-free paper with good quality ink.

Museums, particularly natural history museums, should be concerned about using sustainable practices when possible. In this regard, paper-based records have essentially a one-time carbon impact (the production of the paper and ink), while electronic records have an on-going carbon footprint for as long as they are maintained. Current estimates are that storing just 1 GB of digital information has a carbon cost of about 2.25 kg of CO2 per year. As museums continue to generate electronic information they need to consider what this means in terms of contributing to climate change.

Electronic information has many advantages (ease of searching, editing, and sharing chief among them), but we need to keep in mind that electronic information is not secure, permanent, or sustainable. Museums should carefully consider which documents should be paper-based for archival purposes (for example, accession files, catalogs, and loan documents), which should be both (such as catalogs and loan documents, for ease of searching and sharing), and which should be born-digital (responses to queries, office memos, correspondence that does not require a legal signature, etc.).

—John

John E. Simmons
Writer and Museum Consultant
Museologica
and
Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia
Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 9:34 AM Willem Coetzer Dr. <W.Coetzer at saiab.nrf.ac.za<mailto:W.Coetzer at saiab.nrf.ac.za>> wrote:
If your museum uses a paper book or register to record either accessions (batches of material coming into the organization) or specimens catalogued as part of a collection, please let me know via a separate message, including the reason why you do this and why it is not sufficient to rely on a database.

[NRF SAIAB Logo]<https://saiab.ac.za>    [Twitter Icon] <https://twitter.com/NRF_SAIAB>  [Facebook Icon] <https://www.facebook.com/NRFSAIAB/>

Willem Coetzer Dr.

Biodiversity Information Manager

Office: +27 46 603 5841

Please consider the environment before printing this message.

_______________________________________________
Nhcoll-l mailing list
Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l

_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
Advertising on NH-COLL-L is inappropriate.

_______________________________________________
Nhcoll-l mailing list
Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l

_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.
Advertising on NH-COLL-L is inappropriate.

--
****

Dirk Neumann
Collection Manager, Hamburg

Postal address:
Museum of Nature Hamburg
Leibniz Institute for the Analysis
of Biodiversity Change
Dirk Neumann
Martin-Luther-King-Platz 3
20146 Hamburg
+49 40 238 317 – 628
d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de<mailto:d.neumann at leibniz-lib.de>
www.leibniz-lib.de<imap://dneumann@webmail.leibniz-lib.de:993/fetch%3EUID%3E/INBOX/Privat/www.leibniz-lib.de>

--
Stiftung Leibniz-Institut zur Analyse des Biodiversitätswandels
Postanschrift: Adenauerallee 127, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Stiftung des öffentlichen Rechts;
Generaldirektion: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof (Generaldirektor), Adrian Grüter (Kaufm. Geschäftsführer)
Sitz der Stiftung: Adenauerallee 160 in Bonn
Vorsitzender des Stiftungsrates: Dr. Michael Wappelhorst

--
Stiftung Leibniz-Institut zur Analyse des Biodiversitätswandels
Postanschrift: Adenauerallee 127, 53113 Bonn, Germany

Stiftung des öffentlichen Rechts;
Generaldirektion: Prof. Dr. Bernhard Misof (Generaldirektor), Adrian Grüter (Kaufm. Geschäftsführer)
Sitz der Stiftung: Adenauerallee 160 in Bonn
Vorsitzender des Stiftungsrates: Dr. Michael Wappelhorst
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240130/80b43db1/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image89bac3.PNG
Type: image/png
Size: 33511 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240130/80b43db1/attachment.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image9fa56c.PNG
Type: image/png
Size: 758 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240130/80b43db1/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: imagef4f934.PNG
Type: image/png
Size: 589 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20240130/80b43db1/attachment-0002.png>