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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Hi all,<br>
<br>
don't want to add lengthy comments, so just briefly:<br>
<br>
The entering into force of the Nagoya Protocol stipulates specific
reporting requirements, for those <b>collections based in
countries that ratified the NP</b>. Among other, <i><b>unique
identifiers</b> </i>allowing tracing and origin of genetic
resources <b>should be applied soon.</b> Application of unique
identifiers will be part of and further detailed in the reporting
obligations of respective countries.<br>
<br>
To confirm previous comments: yes, we do need a flexible system
that allows application of <i>unique identifiers</i> to identify
batch samples, unsorted materials, etc. and <i>unique</i> should
not be confused with identifiers for individual specimens (as some
political decision makers did during discussions towards the
European ABS-legislation).<br>
<br>
Unique identifiers should be unique - many molecular barcoding /
digitalisation projects apply various kinds of barcodes, without
testing if these are really unique (a high probability rate that
barcodes would surely be not duplicated is not sufficient in this
context).<br>
<br>
Any barcode or decimal numbering is <b><i>not unique</i></b>,
because "123456.077" might appear as number in various collections
or museums, may perfectly translates into other types of
numberings (e.g. telephone / insurance / account numbers), and
even adding an abbreviation for the institute , e.g.
INST-123456.077 might <br>
a) not result in a be unique ID inside this museum, e.g. if
various collections / sections inside this museum use a similar
numbering system, e.g. compinations of accession dates &
specimen numbers, as John suggested (2014.11.3)<br>
b) not be unique globally for natural history specimens, unless we
do have a obligatory list of Museum abbreviations that excludes
any duplications<br>
<br>
Similar applies e.g. for GenBank numbers; GenBank numbering might
be unique inside GenBank, but the encoding does not allow to
decipher in which collection the corresponding specimen is
deposited. <br>
<br>
This adds an second field that should be considered in this
discussion, how can we link <i>unique identifiers </i>with <i>unique
museum references.</i> We need a kind of master ID, especially
for the tissue and DNA collections and publication of samples
stored in these collections.<br>
<br>
Sadly, this receives limited attention at the moment, even though
many barcoding & digitisation projects outbid each other to
gather & publish specimen data. I would appreciate if we could
enter a active discussion how to deal with this.<br>
<br>
All the best<br>
Dirk <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Am 14.08.2014 22:55, schrieb Colin Favret:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CABKJV_HNGcgTDid+6LpSsPXFSgQNEhBSXZj30M+H+_pr5GRr+A@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Thank
you to everyone participating in this interesting discussion.
I'm at least relieved to know that there is no community
standard, yet, and so I'm not off kilter having developed my
own solution. As I understand it, palaeontologists assign
separate unique identifiers to the different fossil specimens
in/on a single object (?). And Specify seeks a solution to
disambiguate "Containers" from specimens.</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
unique identifiers referring to museum objects or specimens
are not "dumb" in the same way that they are for localities,
collection events, taxa, etc. They refer to physical objects
located in a collection that bear a label with that unique
identifier. That unique identifier is thus part of the object
retrieval process for collection users, in addition to being
for data retrieval.<br>
</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">So can
we envision a system where the unique identifier for the 77th
specimen on a microscope slide can also be used as part of the
object retrieval process? Or have we decided that, given a
unique identifier for the 77th specimen, I'm better off having
to go to the database to reference the museum object's ID
before heading into the compactors? Does anyone have a
significant objection to the decimal INST-123456.077 to
uniquely refer to the 77th specimen in/on museum object
INST-123456?</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 the continued discussion!</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>
</div>
<br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dirk Neumann
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