Catalog vs curate

[Adolf Ceska]

Blessed are those people who don't see any difference between
curating and cataloguing collections. In my institution curators
have very little to say on what goes on the data base.

Our whole herbarium (over 150,000) has been recorded on a data
base, and for most specimens we have at least the so-called
skeleton data available. The skeleton record consists of an
accession number and the species name. This data base has no
value to a curator, but it is of a great advantage to the her-
barium managers: they can get exact number of specimens of any
species without leaving their desks: they can connect with a
computer in Ottawa (few thousand miles away) and get a precise
count in about five to ten minutes.

According to the cardinal rule of our institution, the data on
any NEW specimen accessioned to the herbarium have to be entered
in full, i.e., with the locality, longitude and latitude or the
UTM coordinates, collector's name, etc. This rule is certainly
great, but it works against you in certain cases. For instance,
our herbarium had an opportunity to receive five to eight
thousand specimens, mounted and labeled, from the area of the
Province from which we don't have too many collections. We had to
reject this gift, because entering the label data would occupy
our collection managers for several months. I narrowly escaped
the reprimand for questioning this new-specimen-full-data rule
and calling it bureaucratic. But the collection which would
have enhanced our herbarium holdings ended in another
institution.

Let me say once more: Blessed are those people who don't see any
difference between curating and cataloguing collections. I am not
against cataloguing, but the cataloguing should make some sense.

Adolf Ceska
Curator of Botany
Royal British Columbia Museum
Victoria, B.C., Canada
aceska at freenet.victoria.bc.ca