[Nhcoll-l] Has anyone had experience using Specify as electronic museum management system?

Fri Oct 2 14:47:27 EDT 2015

Just to be sure this has been adequately explained – there are five sets of data that are held in tree form – cascading parent child relationships – taxonomy, geography, storage (where specimens are stored) and chrono and litho stratigraphy for paleo collections.  What this allows is global changes to be made either through editing individual nodes to reflect changes or edits or drag and drop functionality to move, merge or synomymize entries in the trees.  All trees function in the same way.

Angie – there is also a batch identify function that would allow you to re-identify a batch of records (based on catalog number) and create a new determination over the old one which prevents you from having to do each record individually where changes are not based on a synonymization event which is even more easily accomplished through the above mentioned drag and drop functionality.

Full disclosure – I use Specify in my collection on a day to day basis but am also employed by Specify as a usability consultant and trainer.  Happy to answer any other questions that may linger.

Andy

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 Andy Bentley
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 University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
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From: <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>> on behalf of Thomas J Trombone <trombone at amnh.org<mailto:trombone at amnh.org>>
Date: Friday, October 2, 2015 at 11:07 AM
To: "nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>" <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Has anyone had experience using Specify as electronic museum management system?

That's very informative, Angie. Thanks!

While I don't make a habit of it, I do sometimes export sets of records for cleanup outside of EMu. More often though I will simply import "new" data on top of existing data; for example, if we clean up locality data for a set of records with outdated place names. (Of course I also archive the original data and import a note indicating what was changed and why.) Having the ability to do such manipulations is often very convenient, if a little unnerving.

Tom

From: nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of angie thompson
Sent: Friday, 02 October 2015 11:06 AM
To: NHColl
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Has anyone had experience using Specify as electronic museum management system?

Actually, my previous email is not concise in some regards- there is another facet. If you had a redetermination of a genus, you can globally synonymize the old determination with the new. This way, you get to 'hang on' to the taxonomic history as well as quickly update old taxonomy.

-Angie

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 9:39 AM, angie thompson <angie.c.thompson at gmail.com<mailto:angie.c.thompson at gmail.com>> wrote:
Tom,

You can do a global updates in *some* cases. If, say, a genus was misspelled in the taxon tree- correcting the mistake in the taxon tree (aka, 'editing' the node instead of 'adding a new determination') would fix it for all records tied to that node. You cannot yet create a record-set and update only those records included in the set. As to the export/fix/reimport, that mechanism is not in place. Granted, if you have someone who can work directly with the SQL database, none of these issues apply. The edit records limitation only applies to interacting with data from the 'normal' interface.

I have asked the Specify crew about downloading ALL the data for each record into a huge spreadsheet, fixing the records that need tweaking, then blowing away the current install of Specify and reinstalling it. Shockingly*, this was not met with much approval.

-Angie

*note: It was not really shocking that the crew didn't approve. In truth, it was more shocking that nobody fainted at the notion. I would NEVER seriously suggest this as an option. But I think I did get my point across for how much we want GUI based mass editing capabilities!

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Thomas J Trombone <trombone at amnh.org<mailto:trombone at amnh.org>> wrote:
Hi Angie,

If you and Lien don’t mind my jumping in, I have a question about Specify’s capabilities. Is there no means of performing a single global update operation across a set of records? For example, in the case you gave where some records are assigned to a new taxonomic name, does the user need to edit each record individually as opposed to performing one operation that automatically edits all of them? (Or perhaps some global updates are possible in Specify, but not in this particular case involving taxonomic reassignments?)

Alternatively, can data be exported, edited externally (in something like Excel or Access)  and then re-imported, allowing one to avoid having to edit each record individually?

We use KE EMu in my department at AMNH but I’m always interested in learning about the alternatives, particularly Specify. Thanks!

Tom

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Thomas J. Trombone
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Division of Vertebrate Zoology - Ornithology
American Museum of Natural History
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New York, NY 10024-5192
Phone: (212) 313-7783<tel:%28212%29%20313-7783>
Email: trombone at amnh.org<mailto:trombone at amnh.org>
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From:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> [mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu>] On Behalf Of angie thompson
Sent: Friday, 02 October 2015 9:52 AM
To: NHColl
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Has anyone had experience using Specify as electronic museum management system?

Lien,

My lab has used Specify database for years. I love it. Everything is *finally* in one database - there's a table for scanning and attaching accession paperwork and permits, a table for publications so you can easily link specimens to their citation history, all of our loans are 'in' and we can quickly find who is coming due. Use of authority tables and 'trees' that tie to lookup fields cuts down on misspellings, and helps keep mistakes down to a mild roar (our original database has issues with people putting data into the wrong field, such as in the taxon field, they would put 'Jurassic').

It's a complex thing but it's worth it. We make extensive use of wikis to train people, as well as to provide them with a quick reference. (wikis [dot] utexas [dot] edu/display/specify6/Specify+Database)

Finding the information you need is really quick, too. It's been a learning curve, of course, but we can now generate reports that count number of specimens per locality, how many research loans vs. outreach loans for any given year, and so on. It's nice having good tools to look at the collections with, but it's also a great help for gathering statistical data about how the collection is *used*.

I find one of the biggest drawbacks is how hard it is to change information once it's in the database. If data got added incorrectly, or even if you just want to refine some information, in many cases each record has to be edited individually. An example would be if a taxa is split, with some saying with the original genus but others getting reassigned. In this case, you would have to first update the taxon 'tree', then open *only* the records that are getting reassigned and edit each of them. Sure, it's a small thing, but if you have a lot to do then it gets really tedious and time consuming. The silver lining is if *all* the specimens get reassigned, you just edit the 'tree' and the individual records tied to that entry all change (this features comes with its own dangers, though!).

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me if you have other questions.

Angie

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 6:37 AM, Huong Lien Tran <huong.tran at uq.net.au<mailto:huong.tran at uq.net.au>> wrote:

Hi all,

I am posting for my colleague who is working in natural history collection management. Currently her museum in Vietnam is looking to digitise their current specimens collections and is looking for an affordable management system. We've done some research and found that the common ones like KEmu or Vernon are a bit too expensive for their museum to handle. We've come upon Specify (https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__specifyx.specifysoftware.org_specify7_&d=AwIF-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=3JzLnHfq4oh44M8I8ulXjA_C3_YJOuRpCW6ZNR_0Yo4&s=lrcFHbF9J_lBObTcc41Tzpezt7IAcNk1Zfc3g0UOdiI&e= <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__specifyx.specifysoftware.org_specify7_&d=AwMFaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=InDsYKRaBducE-o3tDKHCN6uuQ0o7Lm03va1z7qaUrM&s=HI7xEF19TJNrx5S6GJap8u-oro_8dmJyrNXJhL5-zis&e=>) and it seems to be very good in the prospect of having local technicians handling the development and maintenance the database, keeping the cost at affordable level. Nevertheless, we would really want to have some insights from professionals who had experience with Specify. Are there any pitfalls we should look for? Or maybe a contact points where we can get help when using Specify?

Thanks You,

Lien

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