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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">.. and this also applies for good field notes. Especially, when you work in remote areas. e.g. in Africa. While I always had a computer with me, I copied in the evening my handwritten locality notes and specifically tissue sample
lists I prepared during the day. More then once I found myself in the situation that I could (and had to) rely on my handwritten files when accessioning the material back home in the collection.</div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">These documents should be filed as ordinary accession files - which they are. And compared to my excel entries, I could trace and reconstruct glitches in my field lists more easily. We taught our students in the field always to
rely on the pencil as your best friend.<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Maybe worth adding...</div>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">With best wishes</div>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dirk<br>
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 29.01.2024 um 19:20 schrieb John E Simmons:</div>
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<font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif" size="2">There are several good reasons to keep a bound register for accessions, including permanence, security, legal standing, and sustainability.<span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%"><font size="2"><span> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%"><font size="2">The problem with databases (and all other information stored electronically) is that it is not permanent or secure. Ultimately, whether it is maintained on a limited-access hard drive or
in cloud storage, all electronic information storage is based on the use of plastic resins and magnetized metallic particles, neither of which are permanent, and neither of which will endure as long as acid-free paper and good ink. The only way to keep electronic
information readable is to re-format the data every few years, which is extraordinarily expensive over time, and which will result in data loss with repeated software and hardware changes. Re-formatting of electronic information is rarely a budget line in
museums.<span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%"><font size="2"><span> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%"><font size="2">A hand-written, bound ledger of accession information has clear legal standing because a bound ledger is very difficult to alter without leaving physical evidence behind; by contrast, electronic
files are very easy to change without a trace. Should an institution ever have a legal issue that involves proof of acquisition, the bound ledger of accessions will be a far more supportive document than an electronic file.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:107%"><font size="2"><span> </span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span>It is important to emphasize that at present, there is no way to preserve electronically stored information for the next 20 or 30 years, much less several hundred years in the future,
but we know that properly cared for paper documents will last at least 500 years. An example:
</span><span style="color:black">Walter Isaacson wrote biographies of both Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci, and Issacson has</span><span>
</span><span style="color:black">pointed out that 7,200 pages of Leonardo’s notebooks that are extant (about a quarter of the pages of the original notebooks) is</span><span>
</span><span style="color:black">“a higher percentage after five hundred years than the percentage of Steve Job’s emails and digital documents from the 1990s that he and I were able to retrieve.”<span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span style="color:black"><span> </span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span style="color:black">Add to this that printing electron information on paper using available desktop printers does not produce a permanent copy. Desktop laser printers do not produce
the same quality copy as do commercial laser printers, and no laser printing technology equals the permanence of letterpress printing or hand-writing on acid-free paper with good quality ink.</span><span><span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span><span> </span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2">Museums, particularly natural history museums, should be concerned about using sustainable practices when possible. In this regard, paper-based records have essentially a one-time carbon
impact (the production of the paper and ink), while electronic records have an on-going carbon footprint for as long as they are maintained<span>. Current estimates are that s</span><span style="color:black">toring just 1 GB of digital information has a carbon
cost of about 2.25 kg of CO2 per year. As museums continue to generate electronic information they need to consider what this means in terms of contributing to climate change.<span></span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span style="color:black"><span> </span></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0in;line-height:normal"><font size="2"><span style="color:black">Electronic information has many advantages (ease of searching, editing, and sharing chief among them), but we need to keep in mind that electronic information
is not secure, permanent, or sustainable. Museums should carefully consider which documents should be paper-based for archival purposes (for example, accession files, catalogs, and loan documents), which should be both (such as catalogs and loan documents,
for ease of searching and sharing), and which should be born-digital (responses to queries, office memos, correspondence that does not require a legal signature, etc.).<span></span></span></font></p>
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<span style="color:black"><font style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif" size="2">—John</font></span></p>
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<div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">John E. Simmons<br>
Writer and Museum Consultant</span></font></div>
<div dir="ltr"><font size="2"><span style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Museologica<br>
<i>and</i><br>
Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia<br>
Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima</span></font><br>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 9:34 AM Willem Coetzer Dr. <<a href="mailto:W.Coetzer@saiab.nrf.ac.za" moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">W.Coetzer@saiab.nrf.ac.za</a>> wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal">If your museum uses a paper book or register to record either accessions (batches of material coming into the organization) or specimens catalogued as part of a collection, please let me know via a separate message, including the reason
why you do this and why it is not sufficient to rely on a database.</p>
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<td nowrap="nowrap"><font style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:10pt"><font style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:10pt">Biodiversity Information Manager</font></font></td>
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<td nowrap="nowrap"><font style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:10pt"><font style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:10pt"><font style="font-family:Calibri;font-size:10pt">Office:
</font>+27 46 603 5841</font></font></td>
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<p><font size="2" face="Calibri" color="#4f6128">Please consider the environment before printing this message.</font></p>
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NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
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mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
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society. See <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.spnhc.org">http://www.spnhc.org</a> for membership information.
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<span style="font-family:"Source Sans Pro",sans-serif;color:#008669">of Biodiversity Change</span></p>
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