[Nhcoll-l] Best Collections Management software for a small university collection

[Bentley, Andrew Charles]

Hi Madeline

We use Specify for all our University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and I would be happy to share my experiences and viewpoints with you.  I need to include the disclaimer that I am employed by Specify as a usability consultant as 25% of my position.  However, having conducted many workshops for probably 1000’s of Specify users and prospective users I do have an insight into the community using Specify and experience with collection management system issues for lots of different kinds of collections.

Specify is ideally suited for small collections with its hosted cloud-based solution that will preclude IT support but will still provide full functionality through Specify 7 and the ability to publish your data to any aggregator using Darwin Core mapping.

There are lots of resources on the Specify website including Helpcasts that will give you a good idea of the functionality and feature richness of Specify - https://www.sustain.specifysoftware.org/

Happy to help answer any questions you may have.

Thanks

Andy


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Andy Bentley
Ichthyology Collection Manager
University of Kansas
Biodiversity Institute
Dyche Hall
1345 Jayhawk Boulevard
Lawrence, KS, 66045-7561
USA

Tel: (785) 864-3863
Fax: (785) 864-5335
Email: abentley at ku.edu<mailto:abentley at ku.edu>
http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu<http://ichthyology.biodiversity.ku.edu/>

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From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Madeline Walicek <Madeline_Walicek1 at alumni.baylor.edu>
Date: Monday, June 15, 2020 at 2:40 PM
To: "nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu" <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Best Collections Management software for a small university collection

Hello all,
I am beginning a new position as assistant curator of natural history collections and I find myself in need of a collections management software. I come from a museum background so this university collection is slightly newer territory. It's a biological collection of roughly 5-7,000 specimens consisting of mammals, birds, insects, shells and fossils. It's also slowly growing. Currently all catalogue data is housed on Excel. I'd like to migrate the data to a natural history specific software. I'm aware of Arctos, Specify, EMu, Rediscovery and Past Perfect. I'm looking for opinions/suggestions of what might be the best fit for my collection long term. The curator would also like the data to eventually be sent to VertNet/iDigBio. We're open to both open source and proprietary software. I appreciate your help.


Warmest regards,


Madeline Walicek
Abilene Christian University
Assistant Curator of Natural History Collections
Biology Department
c. 512.227.2152
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