[Nhcoll-l] [EXTERN] Re: Problematic Catalog Numbers

Tue Aug 12 01:46:12 EDT 2025

Hi Mackenzie,

accessioning especially dead bird carcasses is not entirely unusual, even though accessioning (vs. inventorying) might not be a common practice in all natural history collections.

with birds though, there are several good reasons why accessioning actually is a very good idea and should be common best practice - unless it is not just an accessioning number on a plastic bag with a dead bird in it, but a proper accessioning record with all relevant metadata:

1. Freezer with a lot of dead animals in them are a wonderful biotope; nobody knows how long specimens have been living in there, and an accessioning time stamp helps to at least recognise a sequence in the arrivals, or even better, give an exact accessioning date and the name of the person who accepted the specimens. As specimens and tissues age and deteriorate even when in freezers, this time stamp can be really useful.
2. Birds are heavily regulated and are potential vectors, i.e. most species are protected and it is not allowed to take them from the wild, or their dead carcasses may be regulated under animal health laws. This requires that your are able to document legal ownership. In some countries, institutions that accept dead animals picked up in the wild need a specific licence to accept such materials. In other countries it may not even be allowed to accept such 'donations' on their door step because of existing prohibitions to own or legally acquire (even as a donation) such specimens. The punchline of all this that if your institution is inspected, accessioning records help your with the reporting and documentation that the specimens were legally acquired - even if they have not been processed and prepared yet.
3. Occupational health plays into this and supports the institution and its staff to take precautionary measures if specific species or pathogens have been identified being prevalent to a given time in population or specific area.
4. Inventorying and databasing is tremendously supported by a good accessioning record; as you say, freezers tend to develop an life on their own, and they can grow surprisingly old and large, often surviving the employment life of staff feeding them. This can cause issues if you have to deaccession their (partial) content (e.g., after a lovely freezer failure), especially if this includes (highly) regulated species/specimens.

Even if you deaccession and dispose of specimens with all precautionary measures as Sariah noted it, it is worth keeping the accessioning records in your files/database for the reasons mentioned above.

Hope this helps,
all the best
Dirk

Am 11.08.2025 um 23:52 schrieb Sariah Rushing:
ACHTUNG/ATTENTION: Diese E-Mail stammt von einem externen Absender. / This e-mail comes from an external sender.

Hi Mackenzie,

I have had a similar issue both where I work now and at other facilities, so you are definitely not alone. I would recommend looking at your collection policy and/or protocols first to see if there is anything established there. For us, what I have been doing is finishing the inventory before I tackle the problem specimens. I found that in some cases, multiple specimens were assigned the same number, probably from something similar to your situation happening. If it is double-numbered, I use the information that we have to see which specimen the database record corresponds with. Then I can give the others that do not match a new number and proceed with our accessioning protocols.

For those that had a number assigned and are not in the database, I have been treating them as backlog specimens and entering them into the system with the handwritten assigned number. We have a staff notes field in our database where I note the information you are describing in case I find something later on. Additionally, at the end of the inventory, I will see if any of the "missing" specimens' information matches any unnumbered specimens I have. If the data matches, then I reconnect the number with the specimen, and again note my findings. For any of the remaining "missing" specimens, our policy states we will deaccession them if they are not found after 10 years.

Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have more questions about your situation or what I described above.

Best,

[https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/XzmUiTf7LGIyutDBNZgCM2Q-dYzFZiv3lfIbK48pu9WMpAPb07RJk69__Jor7yuQP5eW6VuJfu6uhzB2la5w9Um1YH7omqbfaMCW1ZkNte348e86tvna8GEOVxHI6f5VFQ8TCpMV]

Sariah Rushing

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Natural History Collections Specialist

Lindsay Wildlife Experience

Celebrating 70 Years Wild!

925-627-2937 | srushing at lindsaywildlife.org<mailto:srushing at lindsaywildlife.org>

193<https://maps.google.com/?q=1931+First+Avenue,+Walnut+Creek+94597&entry=gmail&source=g>1 First Avenue, Walnut Creek 94597<https://maps.google.com/?q=1931+First+Avenue,+Walnut+Creek+94597&entry=gmail&source=g>

My working hours are Monday - Friday from 9 AM - 5 PM. I will get back to you as soon as possible, thank you.

On Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 2:03 PM Kirchner-Smith, Mackenzie <Mackenzie.Kirchner-Smith at sbcm.sbcounty.gov<mailto:Mackenzie.Kirchner-Smith at sbcm.sbcounty.gov>> wrote:
Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone who replied to my previous question about storing nests.

Now I am looking for some advice on a problem I have encountered with the numbers of our bird specimen collection. I am working through an inventory of everything we have right now, including an inventory of all the unprepared specimens in our freezers. In doing the freezer inventory, we found that there are specimens in the freezer that were never prepared but were given catalog numbers before preparation. I have never encountered this being done before, so I have no idea how common or uncommon it may be. I do however recognize the issues with such a protocol, as we used to have an additional freezer (prior to my starting at this institution) that failed and was not noticed to have failed until everything inside had rotted. I have no idea if an inventory of what was lost was taken before it was tossed, or whether unprepared specimens with catalog numbers were lost when this occurred, but based on what was found in the other freezers I suspect some were.

Has anyone else encountered this kind if scenario and have some kind of protocol for dealing with the aftermath? Without any notes about what specimens remained unprepared I suspect I may never be able to determine which were lost, but the current plan is to label anything not found at the end of the inventory as ‘missing’ in the database. I have also found some notes written in the margins of the catalog pages saying things like “285 to be prepared” but no additional information.

Any advice or insight is appreciated. Or even just hearing that my situation isn’t completely unique!

Thank you!

- Mackenzie

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