Museum Acronyms

[Panza, Robin]

>>>>From: Jim Croft [mailto:jrc at ANBG.GOV.AU]
Index Herbariorum did not seek anyone's permission or general agreement of
the community beforehand.  They just went ahead and did it and when it was
more or less complete the community saw that it was good and useful and
formally adopted it as a standard and we now refer to ourselves by these
handles.<<<<

I think one of the problems with standardizing zoology is that we're more
fragmented than botany.  Major museums generally have a single botany
department, but many zoology departments.  Index Herbariorum may speak for
all botany departments (at least in this one issue), but different fields in
zoology have their own conventions.  In ornithology (and, I believe,
mammalogy) literature, "my" museum's label is CM.  In ornithology, CMNH is
in Cleveland.  I just found out that, in entomology, we're CMNH.  The museum
has two labels, both widely accepted and standardized, depending on the
field within zoology.  Not only do we have to have an
institution/organization that will (be allowed to) speak for all museums, it
must override conventions in all the separate fields!  That will be a lot
more difficult.

Robin K Panza
Section of Birds, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
4400 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh  PA  15213  USA
phone:  412-622-3255
fax:  412-622-8837
panzar at carnegiemuseums.org