<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Hi Dean,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"> Thanks for clicking send! Your perspective is food for thought. I admit to not being completely comfortable with my decimal system, hence my query to the group. On the other hand, I have not been able to think of a situation where a <u>fully processed museum object</u>, one whose database record is worthy of serving to others and being referenced in a publication, would be broken down any further than one level in a hierarchy (museum object > specimen).</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 again for everyone's insights! Colin</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"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Dean Pentcheff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pentcheff@gmail.com" target="_blank">pentcheff@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr"><div class=""><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">[I have just discovered that I never hit "Send" on this comment. Sorry!]</div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
<br></div>
<span style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">How significant my objection is would be a matter of opinion...</span><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">
But here it is. What's outlined there is, in effect, a two-level system. There are "first class" specimen IDs (e.g. "INST-123456") and then one "derived" level (e.g. "INST-123456.077"). This is analogous to Doug's system described earlier.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">There are several appealing aspects to that. One is that it's apparent on inspection that the ".077" item is directly descended from the "123456" item. Cool. Another is that it's easy to gather together all the objects that came from "INST-123456" by inspection if they're in front of you, intermixed with other objects. </div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">There are some downsides, though. One is that, in situations where there can be multiple levels of derivation, we move to the more generalized system as outlined by Lena above (e.g. 123456 <- 123456.077 <- 123456.077.012 <- 123456.077.012.003 ...). There's an increasing problem of length and complexity with this scheme. (This is not academic, by the way, we really do have quite a few examples where this many or more levels of derivation happen with objects in our collections.)</div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">The particular scheme you propose also has an implicit limit to the number of derived objects. The "-077" implies to me that up to 999 items can be derived at a single level. Though that's probably fine for nearly every case, I think we'd agree that dropping one number and going with "-77" is insufficient. So we have a nearly-always-useless "0" floating around with every ID. </div>
<div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">These are the sorts of concerns that sway me back towards a single, numerical, opaque identifier for every "thing" that needs tracking. It's up to a data system somewhere to keep track of the relationships (and they can also be printed on permanent labels where that is practical). </div>
</div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class=""><br clear="all"><div>-Dean<br>-- <br>Dean Pentcheff<br><a href="mailto:pentcheff@gmail.com" target="_blank">pentcheff@gmail.com</a><br><a href="mailto:dpentche@nhm.org" target="_blank">dpentche@nhm.org</a></div>
<br><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div class="">On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 1:55 PM, Colin Favret <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ColinFavret@aphidnet.org" target="_blank">ColinFavret@aphidnet.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5">
<div dir="ltr"><div 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 style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div 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 style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div 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 style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Thanks for the continued discussion!</div><span><font color="#888888">
<div style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small"><br></div><div style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif;font-size:small">Colin</div></font></span></div>
<br></div></div><div class="">_______________________________________________<br>
Nhcoll-l mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Nhcoll-l@mailman.yale.edu" target="_blank">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></div></blockquote></div><br></div>
</blockquote></div><br></div></div>