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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/18/16 6:46 AM, Shorthouse, David
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAG+8Wb8GU-H803Sy62JWkmJhcbQyNa1krqC=FbD5T0FzkwBhqA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">I am writing to inquire if anyone knows of any best practices guides
on how museum staff *ought* to record the names of collectors,
determiners, and other agents. Do any of you have an *agents* table in
your database? </pre>
</blockquote>
We have a database of nearly 500,000 insect specimen records in
FileMaker Pro. How we deal with our data depends VERY heavily on the
nature of insect specimen data, which has qualitative and
quantitative properties different from most other natural history
collections.<br>
<br>
The database has grown "organically" since its creation in 1999,
with new fields and functionality added depending on changing
demands. The "determination history" field was integrated at
inception, while the "collector" field was one of the very last
additions (it was a complex rationale, not meaningful for this
discussion), so only a percentage of the most recent records
contains collector names. <br>
<br>
For collectors, the software automatically builds a picklist based
upon existing entries in that field, and they follow a fixed format.
There is no <b>external</b> file that resolves names in the list
with identity; if we have labels such as "J. Pinto" and "J.D.
Pinto", the picklist gives only one matching option - "Pinto, J.D."
- and the data entry person has to resolve it themselves (so
identity resolution is performed at the moment of data entry). The
list of collectors contains an <b>overwhelming majority</b> of
people who have no known "identities" to resolve - laypeople and
students comprise the majority of names, virtually all unknown
and/or forgotten. A single entomology class could have specimens
collected by 20 students, virtually none of whom ever collected any
specimens outside of that one class, and then the next semester
there might be 20 more such students - and so on, dating back
decades. Trying to figure out who all those people were is not only
a hopeless task, but also of no value in terms of scientific uses of
our specimen data. Moreover, only a VERY tiny number of names in the
list of collectors overlaps the people who have determined specimen
identities in our collection; for the ~500,000 specimens so far,
there are only about 20 names that overlap!<br>
<br>
More to the point of your question, the "determination history"
field is also formatted in a completely different manner, so it
cannot be indexed or cross-referenced with the collector field, even
if we decided it had some utility to do so. We opted for a
single-field approach to determination history because (1) the
alternative would have required the use of a bare minimum of 15
fields (determination, name of determiner, and year determined, each
iterated 5 times) and (2) only a VERY small percentage of our
specimens have a physical label indicating the name of the person
who identified it (and only a tiny percentage of those indicate the
year) - so nearly every one of those 15 fields per record would have
been blank, and even if not, typically only 2 of the 15 would
contain data. For the small amount of extra effort involved, and to
minimize proliferation of empty fields, it seemed simpler to do
manual searches on a single field if and when anyone actually
thought there was a need to make use of the data therein (you can
sort and THEN parse, if needed). <br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAG+8Wb8GU-H803Sy62JWkmJhcbQyNa1krqC=FbD5T0FzkwBhqA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Have you attempted to link people names in your
specimen databases to their unambiguous identities and, by extension
to their scientific outputs like datasets & papers published? </pre>
</blockquote>
As noted above, we have not done this, and I'm not sure it's
especially meaningful or helpful, also as noted above. About the
only such link we might ever wish to make would be to the names of
the determiners (virtually all of whom were publishing scientists or
at least known entities), and that could be done manually rather
than trying to automate it.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAG+8Wb8GU-H803Sy62JWkmJhcbQyNa1krqC=FbD5T0FzkwBhqA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Last,
does the ordering of determiner or collector names on labels contain
any semantic meaning as it does for papers? That's something I have
not yet considered & quite frankly scares me if this is important.
</pre>
</blockquote>
Certainly neither has any meaning for insect specimens, with the
sole possible exception of types, as type labels SOMETIMES include
the author names as they appear in the published description (even
this is not standard practice).<br>
<br>
Peace,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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)
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cache.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=AwMC-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=ZSRwCk-5uzKFAvT5xNzu95-fcCc4sCld4V9BGRfTzEU&s=ydrCZlugM_cgDWMYGCf6o72avagBNYl6HUwk_fBcYfo&e=">http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html</a>
"There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82</pre>
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