Dear friends
First of all I ask you all to forgive my English. I am Portuguese so
usualy I think in Portuguese and then I try to translate to English
language. Sorry for that. I can describe my experience, so that may be
somebody can give some advice. I would like to exchange ideas if anybody
is interested.
Cataloguing has a great importance to me. I began on 1972 with 3 boxes
full of card files. I still keep them. Not in use of course. This is the
computer era. I have tried Excell, then Dbase and now I am using Access
(Microsoft Office). After several years of using this data-base program,
still there are lots of things I can not do, but it seems that the
balance is very satisfactory to me. Instead of registering every shell,
I have chosen to register each species from the same locality. I have
catalogued 6520 shells in 3060 lots. I think I still have 500 more lots
to catalog.(And I still have many shells to exchange).  Besides other
fields, those lots have a number ID and a Species name that can not be
duplicated because system does not allow it. When the species already
exists, the system shows an advise and I have to put (Var) or (Var2),
etc. after the name, so that the new lot is accepted. This happens with
same species from different localities. The same to special colour forms
(albino,orange, dark etc). I have created two photo fields, for saving
photos of each shell. I have fields to Family, Genus, Class, collecting
date, size(larger),size(smaller),Nr. Of specimens, Country, locality,
collector(I fill this field with the name with whom I exchanged), Local.
of drawer(letter to the cabinet and nr of drawer, to find the shells),
value of the lot, Notes and a selection field. I print a little label(ID
nr,Family,Species name,Country) to put near each lot of shells. Choosing
different fields I have created reports by Families, by countries, by
collectors etc.
If you visit my site: www.shellscarvalho.com you will see lists sorted
by families of my shell collection. I am working to take good photos of
the shells and put a link on the list item. I named each photo with the
number of the respective lot followed by an a, b, or c...
Very best regards
Carlos
-----Mensagem original-----
De: Conchologists List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Em nome de Lyle
Therriault
Enviada: domingo, 18 de Dezembro de 2005 1:20
Para: [log in to unmask]
Assunto: Re: Cataloging

I've struggled with writing numbers on my shells for a good amount of
time.
I just cant do it for some reason. I guess the photo of each shell,
saved
on discs, would be how I "number" them. If I have more than one specimen
of
a species, the photos come in very handy, rather than to reference a
catalog number to find the shells info, the info for the shell is in the
photo! I suppose this method is a bit primitive, but it is the beginning
to
my computer cataloging. I still keep many a notebook of information on
my
specimens ( it's great insurance!)

LT

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