[Nhcoll-l] Unique IDs for museum objects versus specimens

[Rob Robins]

“It is a mystery to me why this scheme is not the standard model for  specimen databases where there is a habit of creating chains of derivatives over time. There certainly are implementation details that need careful consideration (for example with propagation of data down the chain, how "locked" that propagation is, and how to handle things that get completely subdivided so they no longer exist as such, but whose data must persist), but it seems like a very clean, very flexible base model.”

I agree that the model described above is a desirable one, but there is no mystery, as far as I can tell as to why it isn’t standard. Excepting the output of early workers, most natural history scientists have been highly-specialized, studying one class of organisms only. Fishes, Birds, reptiles, molluscs, etc…

This, at least to me, is why modern museum collections are taxonomically segregated – they are arranged in a manner that best fits the historical need of their clientele. (Division of Fishes, Division of Reptiles and Amphibians, Division of Birds, and so forth).

Database software like Specify and its associated web portal, which controls for data typing across collections, is in fact a potential partial remedy, and as an aside, the best enhancement to my ability to manage a large collection in some 18 years on the job.

The model described above is clearly desirable for a subset of materials (e.g., Fishes and their copepod parasites, a snake and its piscine prey – my vertebrate bias is showing), but it runs afoul of historical arrangements and tasking that are in many cases quite inflexible. I favor such cross-collection data linkages, but they will require resources and coordination beyond what most Natural History collections currently enjoy.

Kudos to this group for having the discussion.

Best wishes,
Rob Robins

Robert H. Robins
Senior Biologist/Collection Manager
Division of Ichthyology

Florida Museum of Natural History
1659 Museum Road
PO Box 117800
Gainesville, FL 32611-7800
Office: (352) 273-1957
Fax: (352) 846-0287
rhrobins at flmnh.ufl.edu<mailto:rhrobins at flmnh.ufl.edu>
www.flmnh.ufl.edu<http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/>

From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Dean Pentcheff
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2014 9:12 PM
To: Colin Favret
Cc: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Unique IDs for museum objects versus specimens

This is an issue that I've raised in the past with the Specify team (and plan to raise again in the near future — fair warning, guys :)

The precipitating example for us comes from marine specimens. Often an unsorted jar of material will arrive (e.g. from a dredge sample) to be cataloged in the collection — this unsorted lot should get a unique ID — it may be around for years before it's touched. Then we may pull out (for example) all the crustacea into another jar. This partly-sorted lot also needs a unique ID (it may go to a different room under different staff, so just keeping it with the original jar is not an option). Then we may pull out a single individual, identify it, and use that in a publication, so that, too, needs an ID. A visiting researcher then examines that individual and pulls off parasitic crustacea, identifying each and putting them into individual vials, each of which needs an ID. Etc.

What we have is a clear hierarchical branching parent-child relationship from the initial unsorted lot down to the individual parasites (and their parasites, and their molecular derivatives, etc.). Logically, the way to accommodate this is to have any "thing" in the collection identified with a unique ID. Any derived or subsorted "thing" gets another unique ID and (and this is critical) is linked to its parent so that all the information from the parent (and on up the chain to the top) is immediately available via any "child" ID.

Every "thing" gets a first-class ID (no sub-IDs or a limited list of "preps" from an initial object). Key to the concept is retaining the parent-child-grandchild-... chain. At any moment, one should be able to retrieve any ID's entire chain of parents (and their associated data), or any ID's entire chain of derived children (and their associated data).

It is a mystery to me why this scheme is not the standard model for  specimen databases where there is a habit of creating chains of derivatives over time. There certainly are implementation details that need careful consideration (for example with propagation of data down the chain, how "locked" that propagation is, and how to handle things that get completely subdivided so they no longer exist as such, but whose data must persist), but it seems like a very clean, very flexible base model.

-Dean
--
Dean Pentcheff
pentcheff at gmail.com<mailto:pentcheff at gmail.com>
dpentche at nhm.org<mailto:dpentche at nhm.org>

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Colin Favret <ColinFavret at aphidnet.org<mailto:ColinFavret at aphidnet.org>> wrote:
Has anyone dealt with the distinction between issuing unique IDs (for labels and database records) for museum objects versus specimens? A case in point might be a microscope slide with 100 specimens on it (or a jar, envelope, etc.). These specimens can be of multiple taxa, different sexes, life stages, etc. I believe most collections label the museum object (slide, jar, envelope, etc.) with a unique identifier and then treat the specimens as a lot, but this doesn't fully parse out the data associated with the various specimens in a specimen database.

I've developed my own solution (unique ID label for the object, decimal numbers but no label for the individual specimens or specimen lots - e.g. INST123456 for the slide, INST123456.001 for the first specimen lot, INST123456.002 for the second, etc.).

But I'm wondering what others have done or if there is anything out there approaching an industry standard.

Thanks for your input!

Colin

Colin Favret
Université de Montréal
Favret.AphidNet.org<http://favret.aphidnet.org/>

_______________________________________________
Nhcoll-l mailing list
Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:Nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/nhcoll-l

_______________________________________________
NHCOLL-L is brought to you by the Society for the Preservation of
Natural History Collections (SPNHC), an international society whose
mission is to improve the preservation, conservation and management of
natural history collections to ensure their continuing value to
society. See http://www.spnhc.org for membership information.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20140814/1ee008bb/attachment.html