Collections Catalogue - Daily Summaries

[dhobern]

Daily summary from 25 April 2020

@dhobern

This summary covers activity from 23:00 UTC on 23 April 2020 to 01:00 on 25 April 2020. The following questions and points were raised. Summaries in other languages are posted to the Spanish and Chinese consultation pages. Visit the consultation site to add your thoughts to these and other topics.

• 1.1. Directory to support the collections community (USE)
  • Response: Index Herbariorum shows how important it is to understand and meet the needs of collection managers.
  • Question: Can we use ROR/Grid as the underlying catalogue of institutions?
• 1.2. Locating specimens and genetic materials (USE)
  • Response: The catalogue would be valuable for finding (and borrowing) materials - the main challenge is keeping it sufficiently current.
• 1.3. First step towards databasing collections (USE)
  • Question: Step-by-step guidance is essential to enable collections staff to play their part.
• 1.4. Assessing the scale and value of collections (USE)
  • Response: Regular valuation is a standard process in Australia. Calculating indicative value is possible, but care is needed in how this is presented.
• 1.8. Improvements to citation and visibility for collections (USE)
  • Response: Users of collections need help and clarity about how to cite materials in different situations.
• 2.1. Scope for the catalogue and definition of “collection” (INFORMATION)
  • Response: Examples from Museum für Naturkunde Berlin of collections of additional materials (correspondence, notebooks, etc.) - it is important to be able to show the linkages between these different collections.
  • Response: Xylaria should certainly be included in the collection catalogue.
• 2.2. Identifiers for collections (INFORMATION)
  • Response: All collections staff and other practitioners need to know and recognise their identifiers so that they can take ownership for using them.
• 3.5. Interfaces, APIs and client modules (TECHNOLOGY)
  • Response: Technical aspects associated with GBIF implementing new interfaces to the catalogue.
• 4.1. Ownership of information for each collection (GOVERNANCE)
  • Response: Personal development is needed to ensure new staff understand the importance of collection information and how to maintain it. This may require assigned roles in some institutions, but always requires recognition for the work involved.
• 4.2. Communities of practice (GOVERNANCE)
  • Response: In Australia, the ALA can act as a knowledge broker between collections and international catalogues.
• Presentation: TDWG Collection Descriptions Data Standard Task Group
  • Response: Registration, or automated discovery, of endpoints associated with collection management systems could be a very flexible approach.
• Document: 10 recommendations from DiSSCo
  • Response: We may need to build a hierarchically organised catalogue of all scientific collections with separate interfaces and branding for important subsets.
• Comments on this virtual consultation process
  • We very much welcome any thoughts on the process we are following (Discourse topics, summaries, translations, etc.). What works well and what doesn’t?