As a researcher, I would like to find the specimens that could inform my research. Those could be held in institutions or at someone’s home (permanently or temporarily), and could have different access policies (loans policies from museums, or will to share from private collectors, etc.).
I think then there are three separate things here: 1) knowing that the specimens are there (somewhere), 2) knowing where they are physically, with as much level of detail as possible so that I can go knock on the door and ask for it), and 3) knowing under whose rules they are held, and which are those rules (who they depend on and if I’ll actually be able to inspect them).
With this in mind, although we would all probably agree that the best situation is for specimens to be deposited in a place that allows open(ish) access (e.g., a public museum; understand place here as not only the physical spot but also the policies around it), I would want and/or need to at least know of the existence of those personal/private/other_denomination assets. Being personal/private or public may be subjected to change over time, as pointed out by others before, and passing from private hands to public hands may or may not ever happen (or not during the time of my research). Yet I want the data. And therefore I’d advocate for all kinds of collections (understood as for the preliminary definition of the CD group, “a group of physical collection objects with one or more common characteristics”) to be included.
I think it’s a matter of thinking why do we want the catalogue, or rather, what for. Whether personal/private or else will be important to me only when I want to access the specimens. The question to me would not be whether to include the collections or not, but rather which information do I need to see attached to those records for those to be useful to me (like access options). What a person does with a collection they possess, e.g., if they finally deposit it or not, is a personal (ethical, if you let me) matter.
Yet, playing the devil’s advocate, my first complaint would be in the lines of “but how do we trust this fellow declaring she/he‘s got a collection in her/his living room”. So similar to the individual researcher’s datasets not being directly published through GBIF.
- This is probably more of a governance matter, and not a scope one. I think we want those collections in, but we need a mechanism to ensure those are real collections. A system somewhat parallel to what GBIF uses to endorse organizations could be looked into, “nodes” and experts could be consulted about the collection in question (and this would only need to be done once at incorporation).
- But also an information matter, a minimum amount of info should be requested from these collections to be included (as for any). If for example an attribute of “is this openly accessible to the public”, “where”, “how”, was to be declared, there would be no harm in trust from the community in the provenance of the catalogue records - maybe those holding back the specimens would even feel bad in comparison to others and actually open them : )