38 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
38 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
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Comment from John Wieczorek (TucoTuco, 2005-10-21 18:02:21):
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Following are answers from the perspective of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology to the specific questions Donald posed.
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_1. What identifiers (how many per specimen) get assigned to specimens in your organisation or domain (field numbers, catalogue numbers, etc.)?_
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Our museum uses catalogue numbers, collectors' numbers, preparators' numbers and also tracks the catalogue numbers of other institutions when we keep part of the specimen (such as tissues) and repatriate another part.
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_2. What is the scope of uniqueness for each of these identifiers (notebook page, collector, database, institution, global, etc.)?_
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Our catalogue numbers are guaranteed unique within the collection and are duplicated within the institution. Collectors' and preparators' numbers are nominally unique to a person, but this is not a guaranteed constraint.
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_3. Can you explain the life cycle of each of these identifiers (who assigns them, how they are subsequently tracked)?_
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Collectors' numbers are assigned in the field by the collector according to his own system and are written on specimen tags, catalogue cards and in field notes. Preparators' numbers are assigned in the museum for specimens donated or otherwise not given collectors' numbers and are also written on tags, catalogue cards, and in the preparators' notes. All of these numbers are stored in the museum's database management system, and any of them may be used in a publication (including Genbank), though we promote the use of catalogue numbers for publication references.
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//4. Can you give examples of how these identifiers are used to retrieve the specimen and/or information on the specimen?_
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The preferred identifier is the catalogue number. We generally use the catalogue number to find the collectors' and preparators' numbers, by which the specimens are identified in the recorded notes. Less commonly we would use a collector's number or a preparator's number to find a specimen, after which we would use the catalogue number for further reference.
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_5. Would there be any social or technical roadblocks to replacing these identifiers with a single identifier that was guaranteed to be unique?_
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Yes. All of the existing identifiers are used in publications to reference specimens and cannot be replaced. There is no aversion to unique identifiers, per se, but there would be resistance to managing unique identifiers within the museum.
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_6. In the case of subsamples from a specimen, can you identify issues around associating the sample and associated information with the source specimen and associated information?_
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Yes. There is no convenient way for related specimen records to be discovered across institutions within a distributed network. This is a concern for our collection only in the context of a distributed data network if both institutions have data accessible for the same specimen.
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_The subject of specimen identifiers is somewhat linked to that of collection identifiers, since Darwin Core and the ABCD Schema have used institution and collection codes together with catalogue numbers to identify specimens in the absence of GUIDs. It would also be useful here to collect information on the following://
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_1. How are your specimens organised into larger identifiable sets (collections, named collections, databases, institutions, etc.)?_
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Our specimens are managed within one database organized in multiple collections (some of them named) within our museum, which has a loose affiliation (but no shared database management) with other museums in our university.
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_2. What identifiers get assigned to each of these sets in your organization or domain (institution codes, collection codes, Index Herbarium acronyms, etc.)?_
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All collections in our museum share the same acronym, accepted in each of the taxonomic disciplines we cover. The collection codes we use are a new artifact (not generally found in publications) that we use to distinguish specimens from our different collections when providing combined access to them.
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_3. Can you explain the life cycle of each of these identifiers (who assigns them, how they are subsequently tracked)?_
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Our institutional acronym has been formalized by accreditation from the American Society of Mammalogists, and is accepted worldwide in the mammalogical, ornithological, and herpetological communities.
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//4. Can you give examples of how these identifiers are used to locate the set and/or information on the set?_
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In publications, the institutional acronym with the catalogue number is used to identify a specimen. The actual collection would have to be inferred from the taxonomic context of the publication as no formal collection code exists.
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_5. Would there be any social or technical roadblocks to replacing these identifiers with a single identifier that was guaranteed to be unique?//
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Yes. The social roadblock is that the institutional acronym has a published heritage and a formal meaning within taxonomic disciplines. Change for the future would have to come at the level of the taxonomic community with institutional buy-in.
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