[NHCOLL-L:2090] RE: Ideas for a new ledger system?

[James Dean]

The bird collection at the Smithsonian Institution has recently converted to
an on-line cataloging system. This was done in conjunction with migration of
our collection records to a new data base program (KE EMu).  The move to
on-line cataloging was made to reduce some of the redundancy and
transcription errors in data entry. We will also be able to better
streamline our specimen tag generation. Also, the particular ledger books we
formerly used are no longer available.

We do feel that it is important to retain hard copy of the catalog records.
We established the procedure of printing catalog pages on archival paper
after blocks of records are entered into the system and proofread. When we
have enough pages printed they will be bound and placed in numeric sequence
with our hand ledger catalogs.

The hard copy catalog gives us a record  of the original data entry.
Annotations can be written on printed copy (as was the practice with the
hand ledgers) but we will not regenerate printed catalog pages after 
on-line records are updated.

While the data base system is good at tracking who created a record and who
modified it.  A number of the fields (such as taxonomic name) allow for a
history of changes to be retained in the record, we feel it is important to
preserve a record of the original data entered into the catalog entry.



James Dean
Collections Manager
Division of Birds
Department of Systematic Biology

Mailing address
James Dean
Division of Birds
Smithsonian Institution
P.O. Box 37012
NHB E606  MRC-116
Washington DC 20013-7012     

phone:  202-357-4288
fax 202-633-8084 
 email: dean.james at nmnh.si.edu
web site: http://www.nmnh.si.edu/vert/birds/