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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/27/23 9:48 AM, Callomon,Paul
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:BL0PR01MB5220AB4A758A1B4173CBACD3C38B9@BL0PR01MB5220.prod.exchangelabs.com">
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<p class="MsoNormal">Folks,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s a question: roughly how many new
lots do you catalog in a year? Please include in your reply
(a) what kind of collection it is and (b) how many lots it
already has. I’m interested to see where you find bottlenecks
in this workflow:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Physically receive material – catalog
material – rehouse material – distribute material into the
collection<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Also: roughly how much uncataloged backlog
do you have (as a percentage of the cataloged collection)?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p>As briefly as possible:</p>
<p>We acquire an extremely variable number of "lots" of insect
specimens each year, maybe as few as 20, to over 50, each lot
varying from a single specimen to over 1000 (in terms of what we
extract during processing), though many unprocessed samples can
easily be in excess of 10,000 total specimens. The total number of
specimens we are able to mount ranges from about 10K-40K in a
given year, and every specimen is databased with a GUID (but not
imaged). The major bottleneck is mounting specimens, as most of
the material is given to us in the form of bulk samples. The bulk
samples can take a day or two each to be sorted, after which they
have to be dehydrated (under a fume hood) and mounted, which can
take weeks for larger lots. Once mounted, the specimen labeling
and databasing is relatively quick, and specimens can be sorted to
order or family and placed into the collection quickly. ID below
order or family, however, can take decades, and that's an entirely
<b>separate</b> sort of bottleneck.</p>
<p>We have over 560,000 specimens that have been databased, out of a
collection of over 4 million specimens. Of the databased material,
which includes nearly everything acquired in the last 25 years,
about 400,000 have been georeferenced; over 150,000 of these are
identified to genus level or better.</p>
<p>I estimate that we have at least another 3 million specimens in
our unprocessed backlog in our freezers, and this grows slowly but
steadily; we cannot quite keep pace, as I am the only full-time
staff (in that respect, we may have the highest ratio of specimens
to full-time staff of any natural history museum, an over 4
million to 1 ratio, <b>not</b> counting bulk samples).<br>
</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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