[NHCOLL-L:2341] Re: collection organization

[Paul Callomon]

The phylogeny of the Mollusca is frequently revised in part, but the size of the phylum is such that new comprehensive layouts are relatively few and far between. Until quite recently, our collection was arranged according to Thiele's system from the 1930s. Some families were thus not in their current position, but in practice most people know where Thiele put everything. We have taken the opportunity of a major rehousing project to update the systematic arrangement to that of Beesely, Ross & Wells (1998). I don't anticipate doing this again for another 50 years, no matter how many adjustments are made to family positions in that period. Unlike bugs, it seems unlikely that many new families of mollusks remain to be discovered. 

Whether you use a systematic or shelf-position based system depends largely on the size of your collection. We have 450,000 dry lots representing the hundreds of molluscan families, and with the amount of incoming material we handle it would not be practical to track the physical location of each lot. Our alcohol collection, however, is not in systematic order. This is because space is limited, and it's a relatively small collection (35,000 lots or so). The lots are on shelves in numerical sequence, and the key to using the collection is that it is databased. A list of all holdings of a particular species can thus be compiled, and the lots taken off the shelf by number. 

In a smaller collection, and particularly in one that does not acquire much each year, a position-based system is probably practicable. As long as you never move it...

Regards,

PC. 


Paul Callomon
Collections Manager
Malacology, Invertebrate Paleontology and General Invertebrates
Department of Malacology
Academy of Natural Sciences
1900 Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
Tel 215-405-5096
Fax 215-299-1170
Secretary, American Malacological Society
On the web at http://erato.acnatsci.org/ams/