[Nhcoll-l] Cataloging incoming material

[Shoobs, Nate]

Hi Paul & Kasey,
Over the last two years we’ve added about 1000 lots to the OSUM Mollusk Div. Collection.
Our backlog physically takes up about half of the collection storage space. We have about 100K catalogued lots, and we have ~1424 banker’s boxes of “high quality” unaccessioned material, sorted by collecting event, along with ca. 400 bankers boxes of material of unknown quality. A banker’s box could contain as little as 1 large lot, or as many as several hundred. The average (of a small sample we have gone through) is ca. 25-30 lots per box once sorted, so we can roughly guess there could be 40,000-55,000 lots of material in the backlog. The gastropod backlog, could skew this number much higher, but as that portion of the collection is not presently funded, I don’t have a good estimate for how much.

Our biggest impediments are, in rough order:

  1.  Collecting data transcription. Our backlog material has very high quality data for the most part, but it is mostly on paper. This year we have digitized over 26,000 “field data sheets” from these backlog collecting events (these are standardized typeset forms that have metadata associated with unique collecting events which historically were used in our collection to record a one-to-many relationship with catalogued lots) and are in the process of transcribing these and using them to create stations in our new database.
  2.  Lack of identifications. Currently, I am the only FT staff member who can identify the taxa in our collection. Almost all of our backlog has good quality, standardized, typeset locality labels, but the materials (dry and wet) are stored by collecting event, and not sorted to species. Our existing curatorial standard is not to catalogue material until it is identified to the species level, as we are expected to be an authoritative resource on the identification of our focal taxa (US Unionidae) by our funding agencies (Ohio DNR and USFWS). Material is considered “accessioned” when we have assigned a unique identifier to the collecting event.

  *   My current practice is to provide parties who request data on a particular location with access to these data sheets and lists of nearby collecting events in the backlog. That way, those interested in particular regions can request to search through this material and/or have it be prioritized for cataloging on their behalf.

  1.  Our database is not currently capable of multiple user inputs at once (we are transitioning from a custom flat file database in FileMaker Pro to a new Specify relational database. But currently, all new material needs to be directly merged into the master tables by myself. Staff/students/volunteers cannot catalogue/print their own labels, even if the material is already identified.


Points 2+3 make my time/attention the main limiting factor in the rate at which we accession items. Since maintenance and data quality validation are taking priority over collection growth right now, the number of lots we’ve accessioned has been limited to high quality already-identified lots, usually of extinct or rare species.

After our new database is operational, student users and part time staff / volunteers will be trained to identify and catalogue material.

Our crayfish collection, which I also manage, has 10,000 catalogued lots, and a backlog that is probably at least 8,000 identified lots with good data (an orphaned collection we accepted from another state wildlife agency). This collection, also unfunded, lacks associated full time staff or faculty with ID expertise (I am learning, but slowly). I only accession material that is identified and important (deposited types for example). A long term volunteer curator / research associate handles most all of the accessioning of new material, but less than 100 lots since I started managing the collection.

Hope this helps,
-Nate


--
[The Ohio State University]
Nathaniel F. Shoobs
Curator of Mollusks
College of Arts & Sciences Dept. of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology
Museum of Biological Diversity, 1315 Kinnear Rd, Columbus, OH 43212
614-688-1342 (Office)
mbd.osu.edu<http://mbd.osu.edu>

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Callomon,Paul <prc44 at drexel.edu>
Date: Monday, March 27, 2023 at 12:49 PM
To: NH-COLL listserv (nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu) <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Cc: Seizova,Krasimira <kns63 at drexel.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Cataloging incoming material
Folks, Here’s a question: roughly how many new lots do you catalog in a year? Please include in your reply (a) what kind of collection it is and (b) how many lots it already has. I’m interested to see where you find bottlenecks

Folks,

Here’s a question: roughly how many new lots do you catalog in a year? Please include in your reply (a) what kind of collection it is and (b) how many lots it already has. I’m interested to see where you find bottlenecks in this workflow:
Physically receive material – catalog material – rehouse material – distribute material into the collection
Also: roughly how much uncataloged backlog do you have (as a percentage of the cataloged collection)?


Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, Philadelphia
callomon at ansp.org Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20230327/2c48b0a6/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 3608 bytes
Desc: image001.png
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/nhcoll-l/attachments/20230327/2c48b0a6/attachment.png>