<div dir="ltr"><div>My only caveat regarding the proportional allocation of existing cabinets to the existing collection (of 30,000 sheets(?)), is to reassure yourselves that the existing collection was not built up by "specialty" collecting (of select families, genera, species) which might easily mis-represent the eventual taxonomic profile (proportions) of your growing(?) collection.<br><br></div><div>You will have to estimate how large your collection will be allowed (funded?) to grow. You mention that your are space-limited, but you don't indicate whether you've already outgrown your existing collection, your projected growth, and/or your goals. It's not just where to store the next specimen, but where/when to install the next cabinet(s), which might help you to plan the allocation across taxa of existing shelf space.<br><br></div>Peter<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:45 PM, Doug Yanega <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dyanega@ucr.edu" target="_blank">dyanega@ucr.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>On 3/2/16 10:17 PM, Huong Lien Tran
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;background-color:#ffffff;font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
<p>Hi all,</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>Our museum currently has a small collection of plant
specimens (about 30000 specimens). Our new curator for the
collection is still fairly inexperienced in managing them<span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px">. Therefore, we would like to seek some advice on <span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px">
how to effectively store and classify them </span><span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px">in a limited storage space:</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px"><span><br>
</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px"><span>-
Which system of classification of plant specimens are more
commonly used in the world nowadays? We are using the list
provided in Brummitt 1992 We know that in older
institutions with bigger collections, the classification
of specimens should be more complicated. However, with
newly established museum like us, we are facing with
problems of choosing a classification system to meet the
demand of not only our Vietnamese researchers but also
foreign ones who frequently have collaboration with us.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif,'Apple Color Emoji','Segoe UI Emoji',NotoColorEmoji,'Segoe UI Symbol','Android Emoji',EmojiSymbols;font-size:16px"><span><br>
</span></span></p>
<p>- Arranging specimens: Currently, we are storing our
specimens by family in family folder in compactors' shelves
becaused of limited floor space, and arrange these folders
alphabetically. However, we are having difficulties in how to
arrange them into the limited shelves, since we do not have
enough shelf for the full list of families in Brummitt or any
other classification system.<br>
</p>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
There are even more families of insects (over 1100), and their
classification is in constant flux, so to keep things stable for
curation and retrieval, I do two essential things with our
collection (of over 3 million specimens) that I would recommend you
also consider: (1) organize families phylogenetically and NEVER
alphabetically. This is for the simple fact that when family names
change (as they often do), they are typically still <b>related to
the same taxa</b> they were related to before, so they will rarely
have to be moved, and often only require a new label and nothing
more. (2) do not worry about leaving space for families you do not
have. If you are organizing phylogenetically, then any time a new
taxon is added, you know exactly where to add it. Our cabinets, for
example, have complete lists on them, and we only indicate
represented families by <b>highlighting</b> them. Then all it takes
is a quick glance at a cabinet list to know which families it
contains, and which ones it does not. You can produce an index to
instruct visitors which cabinets contain which families, if they are
not familiar with the phylogeny, and include archaic names (e.g.,
"Compositae") in the index.<br>
<br>
I would also urge you to allocate space based on the actual
diversity of taxa already represented. That is, count how many
samples you have of all families, compare that number to the number
of spaces you have available, and then allocate space *in
proportion*. That is, if Asteraceae adds up to 8% of your total
holdings, then 8% of your total available space should be set aside
for Asteraceae, and so forth for each taxon. This will increase the
likelihood that the natural growth of your collection will fill the
available space with a minimal amount of re-positioning.<br>
<br>
I expect others will have other bits of advice, but those are the
things I consider essential, and they have served me well for nearly
20 years.<br>
<br>
Good luck,<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<pre cols="72">--
Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega
phone: <a href="tel:%28951%29%20827-4315" value="+19518274315" target="_blank">(951) 827-4315</a> (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
<a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cache.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=AwMD-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=W7YEDa160iLESVkY1aJds8flz1yl7bv2sginzv98zoc&s=EKE14G3PUVTWN20hCNpFkdMzjjEMwXO_k9JNJeptxuk&e=" target="_blank">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>
</font></span></div>
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