Collection Catalogue Plan

[Fossil'n'Roll]

I thought I'd share how I plan to catalogue my collection in case someone finds it useful. Each entry will be two parts - a photo of the fossil sized about 2.5x3.5" (5x7 print cut in fourths) and a business card with ID/location/etc. information. Here is an example:

Every fossil will have a unique reference number which will be on the bottom left corner of the ID card and photo. Reference numbers will also be displayed with the fossils. The format: (3-letter ISO country code)-(4-letter formation/location code):(4-digit number in order of acquisition). Country code list: http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/country_code_list.htm. Whenever possible, I will include an image showing what it may have looked like when alive. Skeletal diagrams will be preferred if extinct, photos if extant and credit will be given to the author. The "notes" section will include at minimum a short description of the specimen and a length measurement. Date found will be noted if known. Any restoration done will be described here as well.

 

The photos will probably be lit by an off camera flash and shoot-through umbrella on a light stand instead of the desk lamp used in the example. The camera will be tethered to my PC and photos will be placed in folders named with their reference numbers to avoid any mix-ups. Exposure and white balance will be set manually for consistency and tweaked in batches if needed (in RawTherapee) before being composited for the prints (in GIMP).

 

These will be organized by location in a binder full of 9-pocket trading card pages like these below. One pocket per specimen, photo on the front, ID card on the back.

Most of the ID cards are done and ready to print, but I expect the photos to be pretty time consuming. Again, hopefully someone will find this post useful. Constructive criticism is welcome.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

Works well for small collections when considering man hours invested and length of ID number.  Some people mark specimens with just site number, referencing back to a log.  Whatever you do, start early!

[Malcolmt]

Wish I had the tenacity to even attempt such a feat. My hat goes off to you......

[Fossil'n'Roll]

@Uncle Siphuncle If I had a very large collection, I would be doing something much simpler. But I have about 200 specimens total, so this is doable for me. The reference numbers, while long, are fairly simple I think. And not all specimens will have multiple views.

[caldigger]

"You lost me at hello"!  

I am sure this would be great, but I lack any technical grey matter to even get this project off the ground. Thank you for your ideas they look great.

[Tidgy's Dad]

Great idea. 

i have been recording mine on file index cards for 35 years or more, with location, classification and age details as well as a unique number, but I didn't used to record the date, which was an error, I guess and i didn't take photos. I'm catching up with the photos slowly now! 

[erose]

There is no one way to organize and catalog. This looks good for a small collection.  

 

Only one suggestion: add a scale into the photos. I have a printed metric grid adhered to a heavy piece of plastic. But anything with mm/cm &/or inches will do.

[MarcoSr]

Nice way to catalog your collection.  I wish I could take pictures of all the specimens in my collection.  At best, I probably only have a picture for one in a hundred specimens that I have.

 

I agree that you need to capture the fossil specimen dimensions.  For aesthetic reasons, I don't like rulers in my specimen pictures or to use a background scale grid.  I put the specimen dimensions in my picture file names.

 

Marco Sr.

[Uncle Siphuncle]

I try to cram a ton of info into my photo file names.  Example:  Kdc Eopachydiscus marcianus 3b Site 73 053110 = (Duck Creek) formation, taxon, third specimen of same species photographed from that trip, second view of same specimen, site number referencing back to my personal log, date of discovery.  

 

For scale I’ll often place a coin in the photo representing the state or country where found.  

 

As others have said, your preference is your best guide among endless curation strategies.  My personal approach is to capture the basics with minimum effort so that said strategy scales efficiently with collection growth over time.

[FossilDAWG]

Out of curiosity, why do people record date of collection?  Obviously that is important when collecting samples of living organisms such as butterflies where the information reflects the seasonality of the species, but it confers no information about the biological attributes of fossils.  I can think of only one example from my own collection where collection date would be useful: I have a sample of Permian marine fossils from a site on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic that was later (~20 years after the collection was made) included in a national park.

 

Don

[Kane]

3 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

Out of curiosity, why do people record date of collection?  Obviously that is important when collecting samples of living organisms such as butterflies where the information reflects the seasonality of the species, but it confers no information about the biological attributes of fossils.  I can think of only one example from my own collection where collection date would be useful: I have a sample of Permian marine fossils from a site on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic that was later (~20 years after the collection was made) included in a national park.

 

Don

I could see the utility of recording the date for those sites that may have been more productive in the past, or developed over, or in the cases when the area (like your example) comes under gov't protection and is closed to collecting. In some cases, knowing that a particular species was last collected in an area 50-100 years ago can be somewhat informative as it may speak to relative occurrence, at least when the finds are reported in the literature. 

[Auspex]

It's a good idea to record all specimen-specific data, 'cuz no one knows knows what might be useful to future researchers.

[erose]

2 hours ago, FossilDAWG said:

Out of curiosity, why do people record date of collection?  Obviously that is important when collecting samples of living organisms such as butterflies where the information reflects the seasonality of the species, but it confers no information about the biological attributes of fossils.  I can think of only one example from my own collection where collection date would be useful: I have a sample of Permian marine fossils from a site on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic that was later (~20 years after the collection was made) included in a national park.

 

Don

 

2 hours ago, Auspex said:

It's a good idea to record all specimen-specific data, 'cuz no one knows knows what might be useful to future researchers.

Honestly, I would say it would be low on the list of important data to record. But as Auspex points out you never know what will be important in the future. Sometimes I just approximate the date. The label in my bag may say "Spring 2018". My data base requires a full date so I'll use 3/21/2018. There are sites that are now uncollectible so I do find it useful to see back to when it was last visited.

 

You have heard this before, but the most important piece of information is the location where you found it. Not the ID or even the formation. Both of those can change. Species get reassigned all the time AND stratigraphic units get changed up.

 

What would not change would be the location and description of the actual rock unit you found it in. Over the 50 years I have been collecting fossils I have seen the Ordovician rocks of Ohio, the Devonian of New York and the Cretaceous of both Texas and New Jersey re-evaluated with members, formations and groups all being tossed about.  But notes still will say things like "found in blue gray shale above ledge-forming limestone 10 meters above railroad tracks at so-and-so coordinates" and that doesn't change.

[Peat Burns]

2 hours ago, Auspex said:

It's a good idea to record all specimen-specific data, 'cuz no one knows knows what might be useful to future researchers.

This x1000

[FossilDAWG]

3 hours ago, Auspex said:

It's a good idea to record all specimen-specific data, 'cuz no one knows knows what might be useful to future researchers.

We don't record all possible information, though.  We don't record if it was raining or sunny, for example, because that would not be useful.  Collection date could be useful for researchers in the sense that the date could guide them to the appropriate field notebook and page.  However that data could be captured in other ways, such as by numbering your field books and associating that number and page with the collection information. 

 

Most amateur collectors have a few sites they collect over and over, maybe hundreds of times.  There may be a considerable time between when I collect something and when I prep it and decide if it will go into the formal collection.  I have a drawer for (as an example) everything I collect from the Tombigbee Sand at Catoma Creek. Everything in that drawer is associated with a specific formation or layer at a specific site.  Data including written descriptions of the site, maps, Google Earth views, etc is printed out and a copy is in the drawer with the specimens, and another hard copy is in my book of collecting sites, as well as files and backups for the computer.  I have a different drawer for the Mooreville Formation at that site, so I'm not mixing formations (at least to the extent I can distinguish them in the field).  Alternatively, I suppose I could keep the results of each collecting trip in its own drawer (but I don't have infinite cabinet space) or in it's own collecting bag (in which case I would quickly forget what is in each bag if I can't see it), or I could immediately label and catalog every individual specimen, including material I will later discard, and enter that in the computer, before I make another collecting trip to the same site that might be mixed up with an earlier trip to the same site.  None of these seem very practical.

 

I try very hard to make sure I can state exactly where every specimen is from.  If I have collected a particular site 20 times, I may not be able to say exactly what day I collected a particular specimen.  I doubt that the specimens lose a lot of scientific value if I can't say if it was collected on May 20 or July 3.

 

I wonder how people who collect the same site (let's say Penn-Dixie or Deep Springs Road) over and over deal with this.  Do they record the collection date for every single specimen"  If so, how do they do that?

 

Don

[Kane]

13 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

 

 

I wonder how people who collect the same site (let's say Penn-Dixie or Deep Springs Road) over and over deal with this.  Do they record the collection date for every single specimen"  If so, how do they do that?

 

Don

I take pictures of any significant finds, with plenty of backups. The metadata on digital images provides me with the date. Specimens that are prepared would carry the date of when I completed it, and I can go back to an earlier date to see the pre-preparation image. This is not a perfect system, but it spares me having to make additional columns for date entries. 

 

But I take your point. I don't find anything scientifically significant, so I can be more minimal about the data. It is more for me and nostalgia, being able to look back and reminisce about previous collecting trips, in much the same way old photo albums could be organized by year.

[Auspex]

46 minutes ago, FossilDAWG said:

We don't record if it was raining or sunny, for example, because that would not be useful

I sought to exclude this class of obviously extraneous "data" by using the phrase "specimen-specific".
But, think of what a future biographer of your illustrious career could do with such! It would definitely punch-up the screen play!

[Kane]

5 minutes ago, Auspex said:

I sought to exclude this class of obviously extraneous "data" by using the phrase "specimen-specific".
But, think of what a future biographer of your illustrious career could do with such! It would definitely punch-up the screen play!

LOL. I can imagine that:

 

Entry #1723:

 

"My Dearest Mildred,

 

It had been a dark and stormy night, but on this day the sun's luminousity (0.983) and angle of rays (43.7 degrees) eddied through the boughs of the slender birches in their vibrant autumnal glory, dappling the forest litter like a dazzling play of whirling dervish light. Whence I had been seized by ennui nary hours prior, it was in the jarring admixture of trepidation and hope (blood pressure: 133/91, heart rate 99 bpm) that I held the velvety shale twixt my fingers (12.75 Newtons of force), steeling myself to cleave it with my brick hammer true (144.3 Newtons of force). But, Lo! What manner of beguilement and deviltry faced me! For it was none other than --

 

-- Cluster of common brachiopod Devonochonetes sp. Mid-Devonian, Melodramatic Formation."

[Auspex]

Now we're talking! What a page-turner...
Cast Harrison Ford for the lead?

[Uncle Siphuncle]

And think of the riveting fossil discovery re enactments possible...

[Kane]

1 hour ago, Uncle Siphuncle said:

And think of the riveting fossil discovery re enactments possible...

With an enormous budget, too. We could get all the CGI stuff and bullet time!  We'd need a big budget to cast Harrison Ford. If on the lower budget side, we could make it like those old BBC historical pieces from the 70s where most of the actors are named Nigel.  

[Peat Burns]

In my collection, accession number and catalogue number are one and the same (in some collections, they are different) and are assigned in consecutive order as fossils are added to the collection.  This number is written on the fossil or associated matrix as well as on the box in which the specimen is placed and in the collection record / database.  In addition to the most important data such as latitude, longitude, elevation, nearest town, county, state, country, formation, and geologic age, I record date of collection, collector (and who identified it if other than the collector).  I also record the date that the specimen was accessioned (basically before I begin adding specimens to the accession record, I stamp the record book with a date stamp).  This helps document a number of things in which you or future generations may have interest.  I am paranoid about archival quality, so I hand-write the entries into the accession record with a dip pen and india ink.  These records are later transcribed to a digital database.  For entries that represent a "lot" of specimens (i.e. more than a couple individuals of the same species and collected at the same location at the same time), I assign a unique accession number followed by a decimal.  So if all the specimens in the lot are the same species from the same location, I, for example, would assign them number 4629, but specimens in the lot would be marked 4629.1, 4629.2, 4629.3, and so on.  That way all of the specimens have the same accession number that links them to the data from that site, but the decimal allows each specimen (even though they are all the same species) to be individually referenced in the event that one of them is later determined to be misidentified or if a specific fossil in the lot needs to be referenced in a publication (perhaps it has a unique quality or an epibiont that was later discovered).  In the case of a mis-identification, the record can be corrected without having to remove the original number from the fossil and re-apply a new specimen number.  The newly annotated fossil is simply removed from the lot and placed in a new box with the new name as well as location info, etc.  If I have subsequent additions of the same taxon from the same location / formation, these may be assigned unique accession numbers but stored together with previous collections.  Their unique accession numbers would distinguish them from previous collection dates.

 

Date of collection can sometimes be useful in tracking down missing information, but I record date of collection, in part, for historical purposes.  Without writing a book on specific examples, there are times when I want to be able to "reconstruct" the collecting efforts of either myself or another collector during a particular time or over a period of time.  Especially if that person is (or may in the future become) a notable collector.  For instance, I have a suite of fossils collected by Charles Sternberg, and I value having and knowing the dates that the fossils were collected in the context of his lifetime.

 

Of course a lot of this kind of detail is way more than one may wish to do for a small, private collection.  However, when I am curating my finds, I am *always* thinking about at least 100 years hence:  "How is what I am doing right now insuring that this specimen and all pertinent associated information will still be around in 100 years or more?".  Private collections (if properly curated) often end up in museums and thus develop significant longevity and value.  Even common things that have been "thoroughly studied" may have great value for future investigations on morphological variability across time and space, documentation of palaeobiogeography, examination of things like epibionts, predation marks, or other things the collector never even noticed.  Even currently undiscovered techniques may eventually be applied to old fossil collections.

 

Just my $0.02 for what it's worth... 

[Auspex]

The difference between leaving a legacy and leaving a box of rocks is the effort put into documentation.

[Wrangellian]

I don't have the ambition to maintain a database, it's enough for me to use the old notebook method for recording my collecting info (for my self-found stuff). I record the date (sometimes just the month) at the top of the page or at the start of each new batch that I bring home (see below)... It's a little messy but it enables me to include the date with each item that I donate to the museum (which could be years later), along with the more important location and (tentative) ID.

Hypothetically, what if two collectors submit samples of the same taxon to the museum, and later a researcher comes along and describes a new species using these samples? If (s)he wants to name it after the original finder, could the date of discovery be a factor in who gets the honor? That is if he doesn't name it after himself or his favorite rock musician or some descriptive term like tenuis for example - I gather a researcher has total discretion as to what he names anything he describes, and I suppose it is more likely he will name it after the discoverer if they have met each other personally and the discoverer brings the item to the researcher's attention himself, but never mind that. Assume that neither collector/donor is known personally to the researcher, and that both collectors donated around the same time, but one collected his samples well before the other did.

Just wondering...

 

 

[Spongy Joe]

On 01/06/2018 at 3:30 AM, FossilDAWG said:

We don't record all possible information, though.  We don't record if it was raining or sunny, for example, because that would not be useful. 

 

Actually... there are quite a few sites where the weather can have a major impact on what you can find. For example, the Afon Gam Biota in North Wales: it took a little while before we realised that most of the fossils only become visible when the surface is wet, but the Sun's out (the latter being a bit of a problem in Wales...). The rocks is a slightly cooked mudstone/siltstone, and the fossils are carbon or dark grey oxide films. Go out in dull, damp conditions, and you don't see a lot because of the wet sparkling of the surfaces, but not enough light. Go out in glorious sunshine, and you need to take a plant sprayer to wet every surface (which is what we did, for six weeks). This is the sort of info that goes into the notebooks, of course; normally it's not a relevant comment for a particular specimen...

 

...but you might want to be able to tie the specimen back to the date of collection, because of wanting to know about the weather!

 

Comments on weather etc. also work as a great memory jogger, which is the main reason such anecdotes turn up in professionals' notebooks: it can be the difference between being able to remember exactly the moment of discovery, and just having a vague impression. In general, record anything that might conceivably be useful in your notebooks, and then you've always got the option to extract it for other purposes later.