I couldn’t agree more @qgroom - what is the definition of a natural history collection?
Sometimes ‘collection’ = curatorial department. This is convenient as a way of grouping records as they go out to an aggregator (like ALA or GBIF), it’s a convenient way of providing contact information (e.g. for someone who wants to borrow bird specimens, having the contact details of people working in the Ornithology department makes the process quicker).
But sometimes ‘collection’ = a group of things connected together at a more granular level. These might be a person’s collection (the collection of Dr Graeme Smith), a collection attributed to a donor (bequest of Dr Annie Smith) or might be a collection by virtue of the expedition or collecting trip. “The Australian seamount survey collection” - which might have specimens distributed out to a number of departments and potentially even over a number of different institutions.
Multiple identifiers seem inevitable, as does institutions self-identifying what they mean when they call something ‘a collection’
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