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

Tue Aug 26 04:02:46 EDT 2014

... just to add one point to DNA-samples:

You can have multiple extractions (different dates, kits used, recovered 
DNA-yields) from the same tissue e.g. "INST-123456._077_" (if "077" 
would be a tissue sample) - recording this adds additional sublevels, 
e.g. 123456.077.001, 077.002, etc. but if you do extractions & storage 
in plate scale (12 x 8 samples), you can not assign these numbering to 
the plate / single wells on the plate ... so this system fails here.

Also, you may have different target genes for sequencing, resulting in 
multiple samples that need encoding. This proposed numeric system is 
highly error prone (copy & paste errors are hardly to detect because of 
similarity of assigned IDs) as discussed earlier in this thread.

Relational linkage of various ID-formats seems to me the better 
alternative, at least if DNA / tissue collections are concerned, because 
it allows combination of suited procedures.

All the best
Dirk

Am 23.08.2014 01:01, schrieb Dean Pentcheff:
> [I have just discovered that I never hit "Send" on this comment. Sorry!]
>
> How significant my objection is would be a matter of opinion...
>
> But here it is. What's outlined there is, in effect, a two-level 
> system. There are "first class" specimen IDs (e.g. "INST-123456") and 
> then one "derived" level (e.g. "INST-123456.077"). This is analogous 
> to Doug's system described earlier.
>
> There are several appealing aspects to that. One is that it's apparent 
> on inspection that the ".077" item is directly descended from the 
> "123456" item. Cool. Another is that it's easy to gather together all 
> the objects that came from "INST-123456" by inspection if they're in 
> front of you, intermixed with other objects.
>
> There are some downsides, though. One is that, in situations where 
> there can be multiple levels of derivation, we move to the more 
> generalized system as outlined by Lena above (e.g. 123456 <- 
> 123456.077 <- 123456.077.012 <- 123456.077.012.003 ...). There's an 
> increasing problem of length and complexity with this scheme. (This is 
> not academic, by the way, we really do have quite a few examples where 
> this many or more levels of derivation happen with objects in our 
> collections.)
>
> The particular scheme you propose also has an implicit limit to the 
> number of derived objects. The "-077" implies to me that up to 999 
> items can be derived at a single level. Though that's probably fine 
> for nearly every case, I think we'd agree that dropping one number and 
> going with "-77" is insufficient. So we have a nearly-always-useless 
> "0" floating around with every ID.
>
> These are the sorts of concerns that sway me back towards a single, 
> numerical, opaque identifier for every "thing" that needs tracking. 
> It's up to a data system somewhere to keep track of the relationships 
> (and they can also be printed on permanent labels where that is 
> practical).
>
> -Dean
> -- 
> Dean Pentcheff
> pentcheff at gmail.com <mailto:pentcheff at gmail.com>
> dpentche at nhm.org <mailto:dpentche at nhm.org>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 1:55 PM, Colin Favret 
> <ColinFavret at aphidnet.org <mailto:ColinFavret at aphidnet.org>> wrote:
>
>     Thank you to everyone participating in this interesting
>     discussion. I'm at least relieved to know that there is no
>     community standard, yet, and so I'm not off kilter having
>     developed my own solution. As I understand it, palaeontologists
>     assign separate unique identifiers to the different fossil
>     specimens in/on a single object (?). And Specify seeks a solution
>     to disambiguate "Containers" from specimens.
>
>     But unique identifiers referring to museum objects or specimens
>     are not "dumb" in the same way that they are for localities,
>     collection events, taxa, etc. They refer to physical objects
>     located in a collection that bear a label with that unique
>     identifier. That unique identifier is thus part of the object
>     retrieval process for collection users, in addition to being for
>     data retrieval.
>
>     So can we envision a system where the unique identifier for the
>     77th specimen on a microscope slide can also be used as part of
>     the object retrieval process? Or have we decided that, given a
>     unique identifier for the 77th specimen, I'm better off having to
>     go to the database to reference the museum object's ID before
>     heading into the compactors? Does anyone have a significant
>     objection to the decimal INST-123456.077 to uniquely refer to the
>     77th specimen in/on museum object INST-123456?
>
>     Thanks for the continued discussion!
>
>     Colin
>
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