<div dir="ltr">This is an issue that I've raised in the past with the Specify team (and plan to raise again in the near future — fair warning, guys :)<div><br></div><div>The precipitating example for us comes from marine specimens. Often an unsorted jar of material will arrive (e.g. from a dredge sample) to be cataloged in the collection — this unsorted lot should get a unique ID — it may be around for years before it's touched. Then we may pull out (for example) all the crustacea into another jar. This partly-sorted lot also needs a unique ID (it may go to a different room under different staff, so just keeping it with the original jar is not an option). Then we may pull out a single individual, identify it, and use that in a publication, so that, too, needs an ID. A visiting researcher then examines that individual and pulls off parasitic crustacea, identifying each and putting them into individual vials, each of which needs an ID. Etc.</div>
<div><br></div><div>What we have is a clear hierarchical branching parent-child relationship from the initial unsorted lot down to the individual parasites (and their parasites, and their molecular derivatives, etc.). Logically, the way to accommodate this is to have any "thing" in the collection identified with a unique ID. Any derived or subsorted "thing" gets another unique ID and (and this is critical) is linked to its parent so that all the information from the parent (and on up the chain to the top) is immediately available via any "child" ID. </div>
<div><br></div><div>Every "thing" gets a first-class ID (no sub-IDs or a limited list of "preps" from an initial object). Key to the concept is retaining the parent-child-grandchild-... chain. At any moment, one should be able to retrieve any ID's entire chain of parents (and their associated data), or any ID's entire chain of derived children (and their associated data). </div>
<div><br></div><div>It is a mystery to me why this scheme is not the standard model for specimen databases where there is a habit of creating chains of derivatives over time. There certainly are implementation details that need careful consideration (for example with propagation of data down the chain, how "locked" that propagation is, and how to handle things that get completely subdivided so they no longer exist as such, but whose data must persist), but it seems like a very clean, very flexible base model.</div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div>-Dean<br>-- <br>Dean Pentcheff<br><a href="mailto:pentcheff@gmail.com">pentcheff@gmail.com</a><br><a href="mailto:dpentche@nhm.org">dpentche@nhm.org</a></div>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Colin Favret <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ColinFavret@aphidnet.org" target="_blank">ColinFavret@aphidnet.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Has anyone dealt with the distinction between issuing unique IDs (for labels and database records) for museum objects versus specimens? A case in point might be a microscope slide with 100 specimens on it (or a jar, envelope, etc.). These specimens can be of multiple taxa, different sexes, life stages, etc. I believe most collections label the museum object (slide, jar, envelope, etc.) with a unique identifier and then treat the specimens as a lot, but this doesn't fully parse out the data associated with the various specimens in a specimen database.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">I've developed my own solution (unique ID label for the object, decimal numbers but no label for the individual specimens or specimen lots - e.g. INST123456 for the slide, INST123456.001 for the first specimen lot, INST123456.002 for the second, etc.).</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">But I'm wondering what others have done or if there is anything out there approaching an industry standard.</div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Thanks for your input!</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Colin</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">
<br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">
<span style="font-size:x-small">Colin Favret</span><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><div style="font-family:arial"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="verdana, sans-serif" size="1">Université de Montréal</font></div>
<div><font face="verdana, sans-serif" size="1"><a href="http://favret.aphidnet.org/" target="_blank">Favret.AphidNet.org</a></font></div></div></div><div dir="ltr" style="font-family:arial"></div></div></font></span></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<br>
Nhcoll-l mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Nhcoll-l@mailman.yale.edu">Nhcoll-l@mailman.yale.edu</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l" target="_blank">http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l</a><br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of<br>
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose<br>
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of<br>
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to<br>
society. See <a href="http://www.spnhc.org" target="_blank">http://www.spnhc.org</a> for membership information.<br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>