[NHCOLL-L:2344] Re: collection organization

[Simmons, John E]

I have been asked to clarify my comments regarding the message below.  

In my opinion, the order of a collection needs to be a compromise based on the space available, the storage furniture, and the ease of retrieval of the specimens, all in an arrangement that can be fairly easy shifted to accommodate long-term collection growth.  For these reasons, I think arrangements at the two extremes (those that attempt to be phylogenetic and those that ignore scientific classification altogether, such as arranging containers by size) are not very good.

Personally, I think so-called phylogenetic arrangements are misleading, inaccurate, and often cause us to waste valuable collection space and collection care time.  Such arrangements require a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the particular group for someone to retrieve a specimen or return it to the collection, which increases the error rate by users who lack this specialized knowledge (e.g., students who are in the process of learning it).

If the containers are arranged by size, you can make the maximum use of space, but you do so at the expense of ease of retrieval.  These arrangements make both retrieving specimens and returning specimens to the collection more complex than it needs to be.  I don't think a system that requires an address to be obtained from a card file or a database before a container can be located is very good, because (1) it depends on having the card file available (and in the right order), or the database up and running; (2) it requires you to look this information up for every container; and (3) unless you need only one specimen, you will probably have to run all over the collection to obtain specimens for a loan or a researcher.

The question of the order a collection is in is very important, particularly in light of three recent trends in natural history collections:  (1) collections are larger than ever (a combination of cumulative years of collecting and the consolidation of many smaller collections); (2) in most collections, the number of collection care workers on staff has not kept pace with collection growth; and (3) many current users of collections do not have the specialized, discipline-based training that provides a good knowledge of the phylogenetic arrangement of the group (this is because collections are being used by a wider spectrum of users, and because not as many graduate programs teach systematics as in the past).  As Yaneth Muñoz and I demonstrated in a recent paper [Collection Forum 18(1-2):1-37l, The theoretical bases of collections management], the complexity of the order that the collection is in directly affects collections management (and collections management costs), because "Entropy...increases with collection size (the more cells there are in a collection, the more elements there are to be displaced from their cells, and the more possible incorrect arrangements of the elements in the cells)..."

In addition to space, storage furniture, retrieval, and growth, there is one more factor which may drive the arrangement of some collections--collection use.  In a collection such as the one I manage that is heavily used for in-house research as well as loans for off-site use, having a taxonomically "like-with-like" arrangement (which we achieve by using an alphabetical arrangement of genus and species within a family) is a huge time saver.  However, it is possible that in a collection that is rarely used, or is used only occasionally for off-site purposes, an arrangement such as described below by container size with a specific retrieval address might be more efficient.

--John

-----Original Message-----
From: Judith Price [mailto:JPRICE at mus-nature.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 10:40 AM
To: NHCOLL-L at lists.yale.edu
Subject: [NHCOLL-L:2329] Re: collection organization

For the most part, we use the phylogenetic order for each major collection
unit.  The only real exception is the Parasite collection, which benefited
from beginning in our museum after the advent of computers.  Because there
are really two levels of taxonomy involved in any parasite record (the
'worm' and its host) it is a good collection to store completely
non-phylogenetically.

In this collection there are 5 units: 
1. Reference collection in small jars
2. Reference collection in large jars
3. Reference collection on microscope slides
4. Type collection in small jars (we haven't acquired any types in large
jars yet!)
5. Type collection on microscope slides

Each section has a specific address which is easy (for me) to recognize and
allows for speedy retrieval.  Each catalogue record must include the address
for access, but records can be entered and sorted in any order.

This means the next item in gets the next slot on the shelf, I never have to
rearrange large chunks of collection to make room for new acquisitions or
when whole groups get moved among phyla (and then go back and change all the
address data!)  If I was starting a new collection from scratch of any kind
I would use this system!

In the portions of the collection stored phylogentically we post a listing
at the end of each row of shelving showing its contents.  It certainly helps
when same-level groups are alphabetized!

I think if you are losing a lot of time to changing the data to keep up with
shifts in storage locations, then your colleague may have a point.  But if
you are saving time in retrieval then maybe that is the balancing factor?

Judith

Judith C. Price
Secretary, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
Please visit us at http://spnhc.org/
Assistant Collection Manager, Invertebrates
Canadian Museum of Nature
PO Box 3443, Station D
Ottawa, ON  K1P 6P4
jprice at mus-nature.ca
tel. 613 566-4263
fax 416 364-4027
 
Please visit us at www.nature.ca