[Nhcoll-l] photo vouchering and tissues questions

[Kirsten Nicholson]

Our museum is revising its policies and I'm looking for information on two
points.

*First: can anybody share with me their policies on accepting photos as
vouchers for specimens if you do this?* I have trolled the web for policies
on this, but haven't been able to pull any up. I know that in the realm of
herpetology we sometimes publish short notes on geographic range extensions
or natural history observations that include photos confirming the species
ID (and associated data) in instances where you can't or are unable to
capture and or make that specimen a museum voucher. But what are your
policies on this?

*Second: does anybody make requirements regarding credit attribution to the
collector when specimens or tissues are used in publication? *I've trolled
through tissue policies from several museums, and they are all pretty
similar, but did not see this in them and was curious. I know many years
ago when museums began establishing genetic tissue collections there were
some issues that came up regarding the use of large numbers of tissues
collected by someone else and then publishing that data without crediting
the collector, who in one case happened to still be very much alive. The
counter-argument at the time was likening the tissues to voucher specimens,
no one puts Cope or Agassizi as co-authors of their papers even if they
used nothing but and only specimens collected by them. I assume most
museums' policies state that tissues, like specimens, are donated to the
museum and become museum property and all rights to them (unless otherwise
negotiated) are relinquished by the collector. Does anybody do anything
differently?

Thanks for any thoughts you can share,

Kirsten

-- 
Kirsten E. Nicholson, Ph.D






*Prof. of  Biology          and             Curator of Natural HistoryDept.
of Biology                             Museum of Cultural and Natural
History2104 Biosciences                           103 Rowe HallCentral
Michigan Univ.                 Central Michigan University Mt. Pleasant, MI
48859                 Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859989-774-3758
             989-774-3829*
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