Collector numbers

[Tom Humphrey]

I've added a separate field to the documentation form for 'collector's number'. These are the serial number that some collectors assigned to each collection. The number may relate to the catalogue of a private herbarium or cross-reference with the collectors field notebooks.

The number can sometimes be useful as a way of associating specimens with separate references and as a way of relating sheets collected at the same time (e.g. some of A. O. Hume's sheets refer to other numbered sheets instead of giving a full locality).

It's often easy to confuse the various numbers that appear on specimens.

• Collector numbers will be often be explicitly labelled as such.
  
  
• They tend to be a serial number without a decimal point.
  
  
• They are not the same as museum accession numbers, which tend to be long codes with multiple parts separated by full-stops or hyphens.
  
  
• Taxonomic codes e.g. kent or London Catalogue (LC or L Cat) numbers are written on many sheets - these relate to the taxon not the specimen collection.
  
  
• Numbers prefixed with VC are county numbers.
  

In very general terms unless it's clear that a number is a collector's sheet number then it's probably not.

[chrisu]

Hi Tom,
Just been going through adding numbers to Phipps specimens and noticed that a few are locked and won’t allow editing also some specimens of Equisetum and one of Hymenophyllum wilsonii don’t seem to have the collectors number box showing.....
Chris

[Tom Humphrey]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for adding in collector numbers. Although I'm very happy for you to do so, I'm not sure whether, with nearly 100 000 specimens, it's worth spending much time retrospectively adding the numbers. It may be worth focusing on a smallish subset of collectors whose numbering is consistent.

Something I should have mentioned in my first post: if a specimen already has a collector number as a 'tag' then there's no need to edit the sheet, as I'll convert the tags into collector numbers.

I don't know what to suggest with the 'locked' sheets. I need a more general approach to how edits of these can be requested. The intention of locking (which is only a small pilot involving a couple of people) is that sheets that had been checked and approved by vice-county recorders can be protected to some extent from further casual editing - it isn't meant to be irrevocable if significant changes are needed. The sheet locking is still 'experimental', if it causes too many problems then I will need to reconsider.

I'll add collector numbers to the non-flowering plant version of the form (and the other form profiles which currently don't have the field). Herb@home uses several different minor variants of the documentation form and I'd only added it one version of the layout.

I'll think further about what to do with the locked sheets.

regards,

Tom

[peterwiggins]

As a very new user, I was unsure about this field and guidance refers to Accession number which doesn't appear on the sheets I have been documenting. Can you update this web page with the guidance from this forum.

http://herbariaunited.org/wiki/How_to_document_a_herbarium_sheet

[Roger Horton]

There are two ways of adding collector numbers to records.

1: put the number in the collector's number box!
2: click the 'Tag' icon (bottom right of the sheet image), , causing two other boxes to appear entitled tag or attribute: "tag name" and "value". Start typing 'collectors number' in the first and then add the number in the second.

Sheet 286581 has had the number entered by both methods and, thus, when the record is viewed the number appears twice (under collector's number: and Tags:).

Advantage of TAGS when downloading data:

When there is list resulting from any specimen search there will be three tabs at the top:
'Search results' 'Search help' and 'Maps and reports'. Clicking the latter offers ways of downloading the search results: 'Export report' and 'more concisely' generate TSV files (Tab Separated Value, easy to read into spreadsheet applications), and 'xml format' which, as it says "preserves the full structure of the records" but in an extensive file, the handling of which by various spreadsheet applications (such as Excel, LibreOffice Calc etc.) isn't easy.

IF collector numbers have been entered as TAGS then they will appear in the 'Tags' column in the TSV files. Numbers entered under collector's number are not listed, and only appear in the xml file.

So if you have an interest in a particular collector and the collection is small enough for you to contemplate adding all the collector numbers as tags you will have the advantage of being able to download them in an easily interpretable TSV file.