[Nhcoll-l] Rehousing specimens and retaining labels

[Bentley, Andrew Charles]

Nicki

Why not just digitize them and attach them to the individual records?  I doubt that much if any information would be lost, and you could then discard the labels.  We have done this with old catalog cards and the like that we do not want to keep but can be digitized with no loss of information.  Just make sure that you digitize them at a high enough resolution that individual characters can be read and analyzed.

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 Nicole Seiden <nseiden at fau.edu>
Date: Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at 12:03 PM
To: "nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu" <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Rehousing specimens and retaining labels

Hello everyone,
We are about to begin a major reorganization project here at Harbor Branch to conserve on space and allow for future growth. One part to this project includes rehousing wet specimens into smaller size-appropriate jars, with our smallest jar being 20mL scintillation vials, then barcoding and organizing the jars by size. I’ve run into a dilemma with this however, and I wanted to ask the community for suggestions.
Specimens housed in 20mL vials are currently stored in larger 8 oz jars so the handwritten collection label and printed label (2”x 3”) are housed with the specimen. By removing the 8 oz jars though, we can save a substantial amount of space. For example – we can house more than 5,500 scintillation jars in a single column of shelves, as opposed to ~900 8 oz jars per column. The problem with the small scintillation jars is that the collection labels are too large to store inside of them. While these jars will be barcoded with catalog numbers and unique location, I’m still uncomfortable with removing the internal specimen labels.
One idea is to house these labels in a near-by folder and after this project is completed, printing off new jar-size appropriate labels, possibly with reduced information. The original handwritten labels will likely have to stay in this folder long-term though.
I’m curious if anyone else has tackled this dilemma, or might have ideas on how they would address it if it were their own collection?
Forever curious,
Nicki



Nicki L. Seiden, M.Sc.

She/Her/Hers

Research Collection Manager

Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute

nseiden at fau.edu<mailto:hmcqueen at fau.edu>
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