[NHCOLL-L:351] RE: Further on the accession by committeequestion

[Deborah A Lewis]

Art and others,

Art and Beth's discussion of the need for guidelines for acquisitions is 
important as specimen preparation and maintenance costs go up and space in 
most of our collections is getting tight.  Certainly one consideration 
should be whether it is a voucher specimen, documenting some aspect of 
research.  The vast majority of our recent acquisitions have been voucher 
specimens, with the expectation that we'll maintain them "forever".  Should 
we instead be telling the researchers that their vouchers will be 
maintained "for at least period x" with some term set (10 years? 20 years? 
50 years?)?  This wouldn't mean that we'll definitely "throw it out" at the 
end of the term, but that we could reevaluate it then to determine its 
relevance to the collection as a whole.

Coincidentally, there's a good discussion of the importance of voucher 
specimens going on now on the "taxacom" newsgroup (TAXACOM at USOBI.ORG).

Deb Lewis
At 11:37 AM 11/20/1999 -0700, Arthur H. Harris wrote:
>Dear Beth--
>
>Some good points--responding to the original correspondent, I was
>set off (sensitive spot) by the "one example of blobbus maximus"
>being as good as any other.  In general, I agree that what one looks
>for is a sample size (and spacing of samples in time and geographic
>space) sufficient for reasonable statistical analysis, and where
>space and other resources are limiting factors, lines necessarily
>must be drawn.  My concern tends to be over whether lines are being
>drawn logically or arbitrarily.  The field as a whole hasn't done a
>particularly good job of communicating what is necessary, what is
>desirable, and what is luxurious.
>
>Although not sanguine enough to believe that natural history
>curators are necessarily going to be logical, one possible approach
>(from a theoretical point of view) would be to go to a negotiated
>piece of the resource pie but allow the curators rein within that
>piece (a sort of "we can allocate resources for up to 200 bird
>specimens over the next year--which 200 is up to you").
>
>You made an important point in "Yet none of the curators could ever
>articulate guidelines for deciding when there was "enough" of a
>given category of thing." Where resources are being stressed, it
>seems a reasonable enough demand from the administration that
>curators set up guidelines for at least routine acquisitions.

Deborah Q. Lewis, Curator
Ada Hayden Herbarium                         E-mail: dlewis at iastate.edu
Department of Botany                               Phone: [1] 515-294-9499
Iowa State University                                   FAX:  [1] 515-294-1337
Ames, IA  50011-1020