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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/26/23 6:57 AM, Kelly McCauley
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CWLP123MB678019EACA3BB3494705E56DCCCF9@CWLP123MB6780.GBRP123.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Amgueddfa
Body Light"" lang="EN-US">Hi all,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Amgueddfa
Body Light"" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Amgueddfa
Body Light"" lang="EN-US">We’re currently looking at
how we track the movement of entomology specimen drawers for
the purposes of efficiently recording when they need to be
prioritized for spot checking, when they have been spot
checked for pest activity, and/or frozen due to an issue.
I’m interested to hear how other institutions have managed
this and, if you’ve had a system like barcoding in place,
has it worked well?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Amgueddfa
Body Light"" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:"Amgueddfa
Body Light"" lang="EN-US">Thank you for any guidance
and insight you can provide! <br>
</span></p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>A few things:</p>
<p>Decisions as to the perceived need for tracking are also in play.
<br>
</p>
<p>If a collection is small, then a simple policy of rotating
drawers through a freezer may be all that is needed. For example,
if you can freeze 3 drawers every 3 days (i.e., 6 a week) then you
can freeze as many as 300 drawers in a year. This would not
require tracking at all if the drawers are rotated <b>in a fixed
sequence</b>; even a new volunteer or curatorial aide will be
able to tell which drawers are next when they remove the set
already in the freezer.</p>
<p>If a collection has relatively low risk from pests, a more
relaxed policy can be followed than in a facility which is under
constant and significant threat.</p>
<p>Some collections have the ability to use fumigants such as
Dichlorvos, others do not, and having fumigants also can mitigate
risk.</p>
<p>Finally, there is a fairly evident correlation between usage and
risk that is self-reinforcing. That is, any drawer that is never
opened is in the lowest risk class, and this correlation proceeds
along the spectrum to drawers that are opened on a daily basis, or
<b>left</b> open, being in the highest risk class. A system that
arbitrarily checks for infestation and treats all drawers as
having equal probability of pest attack, is probably not
appropriate, and becomes increasingly less efficient as a
collection gets larger. Drawers that are being opened routinely
are also being scanned for pests <b>every time they are opened</b>
(assuming that the people working in the collection know how to
recognize pest attack), so they are automatically getting a level
of monitoring that is appropriate, as it correlates directly to
their level of use.</p>
<p>A corollary to this is that recently-acquired material such as
incoming loans/returns, or material that has had known exposure
(e.g., a drawer that was inadvertently left open for a weekend)
should be frozen as a matter of policy.</p>
<p>The end result is that a system of tracking may not be necessary
at all, and control can be reasonably effective if a collection
simply follows sensible hygienic and curatorial practices. As far
as personal experience, I manage a collection of some 4 million
specimens, stored in some 5500 drawers, and we don't have a
tracking system for pest monitoring, nor a freezer rotation
schedule, nor a spot-checking system as such, and we are not able
to use fumigants; drawers are scrutinized as they are used, and
freezing is used almost exclusively for incoming material and
exposed material. I've been here 24 years, and have found carpet
beetles eating specimens maybe 7 or so times in all that time,
affecting maybe 3-5 specimens per instance, and probably half of
those were things that had come back as loan returns. In our case,
we would not expect that a significant investment of time and
energy into more rigorous monitoring would have an equally
significant payoff. For us it is a zero-sum scenario; we have only
one full time curator (myself), and limited budget for part-time
aides, and tens of thousands of specimens being added to the
collection each year, faster than we can process them. An hour
used for tracking or monitoring pests would be an hour that
higher-priority needs in the collection were being neglected. If
we had dozens of volunteers, to the point where some of them had
no more productive tasks that they could be assigned than pest
monitoring, <b>then</b> the equation might change.<br>
</p>
<p>Ultimately, it's all about whether the costs (and risks) and
benefits are being properly balanced.</p>
<p>Peace,<br>
</p>
<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://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html">https://faculty.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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