using institution labels
Date: Thu, 29 Jul 1999 09:28:00 -0600 To: sackley@compuserve.com, bill.armstrong@intermec.com, brianb@mizar.usc.edu, colwell@uconnvm.uconn.edu, christine.deal@intermec.com, whallwac@sas.upenn.edu, djanzen@sas.upenn.edu, mkaspari@ou.edu, becky_nichols@nps.gov, Chuck_Parker@nps.gov, KPerry@intermec.com, cthompso@sel.barc.usda.gov, windsord@tivoli.si.edu, dl@pick.uga.edu, longinoj@elwha.evergreen.edu, jugalde@inbio.ac.cr, longinoj@evergreen.edu, pick@pick.uga.edu, jbeach@eagle.cc.ukans.edu From: Daniel Janzen <djanzen@sas.upenn.edu> Subject: using institution labels 29 Jul 1999 Philadelphia Jack said: > >Second, regarding Dan's comment about projects: I would suggest >special project prefixes only when the project is REALLY BIG. >Otherwise I recommend a project thinking about relationships with >institutions where the material will eventually be deposited, and >getting assigned a block of their numbers. That is how ALAS operates, >using blocks of INBio numbers. I agree with Jack's observation (though sometimes it will be human/institutional domains rather than size of the project per se that will determine whether to lock into dependency on an institution's labeling system or go it alone) . However, when as ecology and other mass-collection-projects become administratively more integegrated with systematics-based projects (e.g., ALAS as an example), it is more than I could ever dream that generic coordination/centralization of this nature could be/would be achievable in the near future throughout many countries or within many single countries. That is to say, INBio is happy to commit to ALAS for many obvious reasons, but getting the Smithsonian, for example, to agree to assign a large block of numbers to each of the major insect collecting efforts in the US would be intellectually possible but politically not practical, me thinks/opines. Just as it requires a committment on the part of the field project to stay with the accord, as Jack and Rob are doing in ALAS, it also requires a committment on the part of the institution to "be" the prefix for the project's barcodes, a committment that has a cash as well as a politico/sociologico/tecnico element. In the meantime, if there is no mechanism for a free-standing project to voluntarily and easily (straightforwardly) central register a prefix for a "its" bar codes, at the least, there are going to be great flocks of bar codes with raw numbers or unconsciously duplicated prefixes on them cascading into (and through) museums and other sorts of cyberspace/physical repositories. P.S. There is another function of the prefix besides lending uniquess to the numeric following. The alpha prefix INBIO, ALAS, GSMNP, etc. tells the viewer (or the search engine) that there is a large cluster of fields and metadata at that "point". The search engine may extract only from, for example, 12 of those fields (the same 12 it is extracting from other DBs to create the content for the form you have submitted). However, there will be a metadata registry somewhere in the system that will tell you or anyone else what is the total set of fields associated with a specimen with the prefix INBio, ALAS, whatever, many of which are largely unique to that DB (e.g., my event-based records have date of prepupa, date of pupation, and date of eclosion fields). So, you can then search the entire system for records (wherever the specimen or a record of a specimen happens to be housed) that you know will have that largely unique data behind them by searching for that prefix rather than for that numeric. Once you have your list of records, you can then query that particular DB for the content of that largely unique set of fields, with a form that would be largely frustrating to the search engine if applied generally across all museums, for example. Dan and Winnie and Espinita (who especially likes bar codes)
Discover Life in America | Science | Unique Identifiers & Barcodes | Correspondence | Daniel Janzen - 29 July, 1999 |