[Nhcoll-l] Seeking recommendations for mollusk specimen digitization workflows

[Callomon,Paul]

Dear Dr. Rowsey,

I’ll let everyone else weigh in on the best kind of database (we have a home-brewed FileMaker jawn that we really like), but one piece of data that many unionid folks appreciate is drainage. You can usually deduce this from the river name, but it’s rarely part of the primary data.

PC

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


From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of Dakota Rowsey
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2025 2:33 PM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] Seeking recommendations for mollusk specimen digitization workflows


External.
Hello NHCOLLers,

I am getting ready to develop a workflow for digitizing our museum's collection of mollusks from Minnesota, which mainly consists of freshwater mussels and land and freshwater snails. My taxonomic expertise is not in mollusks (though I'm a big fan of unionids) and so I'm interested to learn from other collection managers of mollusks who have digitized their own collections. What worked well for you and what would you recommend doing differently? I'm also interested in what kinds of digitized information would be of interest to malacologists that may not be readily available from specimen tags and field notes but would nevertheless be feasible to capture quickly, considering we will be handling our entire collection of shells and fluid specimens - I'm thinking trait data of some kind. Since we're starting mostly from scratch, I want to use this opportunity as best I can.

Thanks for any advice you may have!

Sincerely,
Dakota

--
Dakota M. Rowsey, Ph.D. (he/his)
Biology Collections Manager
Science Museum of Minnesota
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