Andy,
Out collecting Viviparus yesterday.  Sorry to hear all this, but it is all
too familiar.  Way too familiar!  A agree that we should use specimens we
collect ourselves, but as you know this is not always possible.  We must
retain some degree of trust in older material.  I must say that Harry Lee
brought up a good point a few months ago over the phone.  He said that the
study of taxonomy does not just include the specimens, but a clear
understanding of the collectors and authors of the time, their methods, the
quality of the optics in their microscopes . .  a whole bunch of stuff to
deduce what was meant in a description or discussion.  So just because a
label doesn't match . . . the old stuff may be able to be teased into the
proper perspective with appropriate historical knowledge.  One of my
earlier points comes to mind now.  When faced with vast amounts of material
and deadlines this luxury may fall by the wayside.
 
Busy.  Off to the races.....
 
Kurt
 
>Kurt, I'd go further than your statement: No researcher in his right mind
>uses a museum collection when he can collect his own specimens. There is no
>better way to ensure that the specimens were collected and processed to the
>researcher's satisfaction. I work in a collection that is more than 150
>years old, and problems such as these occur all too often with the older
>material:
>
>1. The specimen was used for a display and the labels lost. Maybe the label
>will turn up somewhere else in the collection. It's happened before.
>2. The specimen is beautiful, but was acquired from someone who didn't
>supply adequate locality information. Or gave a misleading locality.
>3. Specimens from different localities are mixed in one tray.
>4. The specimen doesn't match the label.
>5. The specimen has two labels that disagree.
>6. In some really dreadful cases, the specimen derives from a large amateur
>collection that was housed on the ground under the floorboards of a house
>in an area that receives more than 60 inches of rain per year. Some of them
>had to be retrieved with a shovel (hey Kurt, remember the Schowalter
>collection?). The 19th-century curator wrote some interesting notes about
>these boxes.
>7. The old label deteriorated and was copied incompetently.
>8. The old label is illegible. Is that letter N for "North", or W for
>"West"?
>9. The catalog card says there are 11 specimens in the lot, and the lot now
>has 3. Or 12.
>10. The old, printed label gives the address of the collector, which was
>later misinterpreted as the collecting locality. (Kurt, are you still
>listening? All those Schowalter shells couldn't have come from Uniontown!)
>
>That's the downside. The upside is the pleasure, and practicality, of
>working with the same material that my predecessors handled and based their
>knowledge of species on. Some were used as the basis for illustrations, or
>even as types of new species. And it is the exception, not the rule, to
>have problems with older material. Usually, the old catalog card (if there
>is one) matches the old material precisely. And the cataloged specimens can
>almost invariably be found, which I gather is rather unusual in old
>collections.
>
>So Jose's point is an apt one: However you organize your shells, always
>bear in mind what would happen if you (or someone else) dropped a drawer.
>If you live long enough, it will happen! Some museums enclose the specimens
>in paper boxes and label the boxes. Of course, you can't see what is
>inside. The Geological Survey of Alabama encloses type specimens in clear
>plastic boxes, with the labels inside. The boxes are too expensive to use
>for all specimens, but they are good for storing large numbers of small
>specimens, which can't be labeled individually anyway.
>
>One problem with labeling individual shells is that most of them are very
>small. This means that the specimen has to be placed in a labeled container
>(gel capsule, glass vial, pill box, chipboard tray, etc.). Another problem
>is that the label may obscure a feature that a future researcher will want
>to examine. Some curators glue on paper labels that can be removed with
>water.
>
>I think that I will examine the drawers very carefully to see what can be
>salvaged. If a specimen is where the labels say it should be, and it could
>not be mistaken for anything else, then it is salvageable. If a specimen
>has jumped to tray B, but could only have come from tray A, then I will put
>it in a new tray C with a note that I removed it from tray B and it
>probably came from tray A. If a specimen cannot be traced unambiguously to
>its source, then it will go into a box along with other loose specimens to
>give to teachers. But it's going to be a headache.
>
>Andrew K. Rindsberg
>Geological Survey of Alabama
>