[Nhcoll-l] Seeking advice for classification of herbarium specimens in museum

[Doug Yanega]

On 3/2/16 10:17 PM, Huong Lien Tran wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
> Our museum currently has a small collection of plant specimens (about 
> 30000 specimens). Our new curator for the collection is still fairly 
> inexperienced in managing them. Therefore, we would like to seek some 
> advice on how to effectively store and classify them in a limited 
> storage space:
>
>
> - Which system of classification of plant specimens are more commonly 
> used in the world nowadays? We are using the list provided in Brummitt 
> 1992 We know that in older institutions with bigger collections, the 
> classification of specimens should be more complicated. However, with 
> newly established museum like us, we are facing with problems of 
> choosing a classification system to meet the demand of not only our 
> Vietnamese researchers but also foreign ones who frequently have 
> collaboration with us.
>
>
> - Arranging specimens: Currently, we are storing our specimens by 
> family in family folder in compactors' shelves becaused of limited 
> floor space, and arrange these folders alphabetically. However, we are 
> having difficulties in how to arrange them into the limited shelves, 
> since we do not have enough shelf for the full list of families in 
> Brummitt or any other classification system.
>
>
There are even more families of insects (over 1100), and their 
classification is in constant flux, so to keep things stable for 
curation and retrieval, I do two essential things with our collection 
(of over 3 million specimens) that I would recommend you also consider: 
(1) organize families phylogenetically and NEVER alphabetically. This is 
for the simple fact that when family names change (as they often do), 
they are typically still *related to the same taxa* they were related to 
before, so they will rarely have to be moved, and often only require a 
new label and nothing more. (2) do not worry about leaving space for 
families you do not have. If you are organizing phylogenetically, then 
any time a new taxon is added, you know exactly where to add it. Our 
cabinets, for example, have complete lists on them, and we only indicate 
represented families by *highlighting* them. Then all it takes is a 
quick glance at a cabinet list to know which families it contains, and 
which ones it does not. You can produce an index to instruct visitors 
which cabinets contain which families, if they are not familiar with the 
phylogeny, and include archaic names (e.g., "Compositae") in the index.

I would also urge you to allocate space based on the actual diversity of 
taxa already represented. That is, count how many samples you have of 
all families, compare that number to the number of spaces you have 
available, and then allocate space *in proportion*. That is, if 
Asteraceae adds up to 8% of your total holdings, then 8% of your total 
available space should be set aside for Asteraceae, and so forth for 
each taxon. This will increase the likelihood that the natural growth of 
your collection will fill the available space with a minimal amount of 
re-positioning.

I expect others will have other bits of advice, but those are the things 
I consider essential, and they have served me well for nearly 20 years.

Good luck,

-- 
Doug Yanega      Dept. of Entomology       Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314     skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__cache.ucr.edu_-7Eheraty_yanega.html&d=AwIC-g&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=CLFZJ3fvGSmDp7xK1dNZfh6uGV_h-8NVlo3fXNoRNzI&m=W7YEDa160iLESVkY1aJds8flz1yl7bv2sginzv98zoc&s=EKE14G3PUVTWN20hCNpFkdMzjjEMwXO_k9JNJeptxuk&e= 
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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