University of Birmingham

[Roger Horton]

We seem to have hit a rich vein of University of Birmingham sheets. These have a label at the top 'Herb. Bot. Dept., Univ. Birmingham. Presented by........'

I assume we need to record University of Birmingham as herbarium (in contrast to SLBI), but what about the 'presenter', where does their name go (ex herb., comm., per)?

[Tom Humphrey]

The reason for the sudden influx of BIRM sheets is that I had run out of SLBI images.

The BIRM sheets are miscellaneous folders that had previously been missed out when the bulk of the collection was documented - there may be a couple of hundred sheets more once I've finished sorting out the residue.

There's no need to record Birmingham as an ex herb entry for these sheets (as they are from the Birmingham herbarium).

'Presenter' (at least in the context of GS West and W Hillhouse) should be recorded as an ex herb entry.

There will also, in the next couple of days, be a batch of ~100 Shrewsbury School (SHYB) specimens (all probably collected by R de G Benson) that Alex Lockton has just sent me.

I've collected the next batch of SLBI images (~13000) and will start loading them tomorrow - I'd hoped to have the first new ones online tonight, but got back to Manchester later than planned.

[Chris Liffen]

Good news !

[David Price]

re Tom's direction that sheets "presented by" G S West should be recorded as ex herb West, I recently wrote -

"The label "Donor unknown" appears not infrequently on BIRM sheets, often associated with the name of G S West.

"The H@H Wiki says that West took up an appointment at Birmingham University in 1906, later becoming Professor there. He enlarged and improved the department, especially the herbarium."

See http://herbariaunited.org/core/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2508

I wouldn't say that 'ex herb West' was always appropriate. Some of the "presented by" sheets possibly came from within BIRM and others from outside. Is there any record of West having acquired herbaria or specimens other than through the Exchange Club? The list of "associated with" collectors is very long. ("associated with" is misleading in that it implies a personal relationship between collectors which may never in fact have existed).

[Tom Humphrey]

In principle I agree with you that the use of 'ex herb' by herb@home is far too broad. However, I would like to record the relationships somehow and don't want to make things too complicated.

It could be possible to justify additional relationship types such as 'donated by', 'collated by', 'curated by' and possibly even 'traded by (e.g. Thomas Thorp)' and some of those might be practical, useful additions.

Equally the the automatically generated lists of 'associated with' can be misleading, but can also have a narrow practical purpose when trying to decipher names on labels. I'm open to suggestions about how the list should be filtered or presented better.

Specifically re West at Birmingham, I think the dividing line between institutional v's the private collections of professors can be extremely blurred. West may well have regarded his collection as proprietary, even though it might have been housed at the university (there are several present-day example of that). I think the use of the 'presented by' labels indicates a transaction between West and the University that was significant at the time (even if perhaps it was only a titular change).

I am definitely open to suggestions for how to better represent these things in the database - but I do see limiting complexity as an important consideration.

[David Price]

Thank you for that explanation; especially about the blurred dividing line (which confirms my own suspicions). From now on I will read between the lines when I see 'ex herb' qualified by 'presented by'.