[Nhcoll-l] Numbers on specimens

[Lisa Amati]

Hi Liath,

At the New York State Museum, we have found numerous specimens in the collection on which the paper labels are now too dirty or scuffed to be legible.  We recently started numbering specimens in our Paleontology Stratigraphic Collection using white acrylic paint as a base coat, solvent resistant pens for the number, and a B72 coating.  We found that the B72 was smearing regular archival ink so found the special solvent resistant pens, available through a few places online.  That has mostly solved our problems.  We are also coating the old paper labels with B72 to try to make them last longer.

Good luck!
Lisa
________________________________
From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Liath Appleton <liathappleton at gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2022 12:15 PM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Numbers on specimens

As most of you know, specimens often have their old numbers written somewhere directly on the surface of the object. In our collections we do not write numbers on the specimens, primarily because the previous curator didn't want to police the handwriting skills of her volunteers. That makes sense, but I think that we really should have the numbers on there somehow. Some people have suggested printing out the numbers and using some type of glue to adhere the numbers to the specimens. I've seen this done before, but I've also seen many of those labels falling off over time. When I managed mollusk collections, writing directly on the shell surface was usually easy to do, but for my current collections that consist primarily of fossils, rocks and minerals, writing on the surface can be tricky. For those of you who do apply numbers to specimens, what are your thoughts on the subject?
Thanks ---Liath


Liath Appleton
Collections Manager
Non-Vertebrate Paleontology Lab
University of Texas at Austin
Bldg PRC122 - campus mail code R8500
10100 Burnet Road
Austin, TX 78758

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