[Taxacom] Herbarium sequence revisited

[Chapman, Alex]

In PERTH, we are in the fortunate position of being able to build a new herbarium facility as the first stage of a new Biodiversity Science Centre. 
Our herbarium currently holds some 650,000 specimens but the new facility will be designed to hold double that.

I know this has been asked before on TAXACOM
  (see  Lemson (January 2002): http://listserv.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0201&L=taxacom&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=30627
   and  Stevens (April 1999): http://listserv.nhm.ku.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9904&L=taxacom&D=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=7402 )

and much informative discussion was had, but I am wondering if attitudes may be changing with the subsequent publication of APG II and then the ATOL project, amongst others.

My interpretation of these previous discussions is that most contributors believed that a systematic sequence (as opposed to alphabetic) was the preferred one if the opportunity arose, however, adoption of APG may be premature (as at January 2002).

In June 2006, my feeling is that the basic ordinal framework is now strongly supported and unlikely to change topology in any radical way.  However, as Peter Stevens acknowledged in 1999, "even with the APG system, there are very, very many ways of arranging families in a linear sequence".
My question is - has anyone attempted to define a linear sequence of families aligned to the APG II ordinal framework (and below) and has it been implemented in a herbarium of reasonable size?  If so, what is the user experience - for both curators and visitors.  If it was considered but rejected as an option, what were the perceived problems (and what system was subsequently adopted)?
Our team here would value any insights TAXACOM list members may have on this subject.

Cheers,
Alex
____
Alex R. Chapman                   Email: alexc at calm.wa.gov.au
FloraBase Manager            http://florabase.calm.wa.gov.au/
Research Scientist           Voice/Fax: +61 8 9334 0513 /0515
WA Herbarium - Department of Conservation and Land Management
Locked Bag 104 Bentley Delivery Centre Western Australia 6983


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