Dear Conchlers,

to get in the meantime a numerating system we created systematic numbers to
give the shells a systematical order.
My son will prepare a sample for this that you can see what his ordering of
shells is. Duing some literature in
some cases is missing author and year of description, but he is looking in
the future for it. At the moment he
is working again with dbase for dos and exel.
Which fields should be important to have good informations for a  shell
collection
number of inventure
family
systemnumber
genus
species
author
maybe number of specimens
state
country
locality
coordinates concerning altitude, depth, and the usual geographic coordinates
(4 - 5 fields all)
habitat
day
month
year
collected by
ex collection
reference

there could be again other fields, but these are the most importants

I hope this serves
with best shelling greetings
Irmgard, mother from Helmut, who has quit the list for some doubtful attacks
against him


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mary Canada" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 7:08 AM
Subject: Re: Numbering systems


> So our taxonomy is inaccurate? And will always be so?  Taking that premise
then,
>
> why is there no central registry of some sort that would allow people to
archive
>
> the data key to their collection?  It seems a shame to see the work of a
> lifetime lost because others either do not understand the importance of
the data
>
> lists or simply do not care.  If this data is so crucial to a well
maintained
> collection then it seems some sort of concerted effort needs to be
undertaken to
>
> preserve it for the future.  What is the point of data that  so frequently
is
> irretrievably lost?  Shouldn't we be looking at ways to preserve this work
for
> the future?
>
> "Orstan, Aydin" wrote:
>
> > >Although there is work involved in relabeling when the taxanomic names
> > change, isn't
> > >this work that should be done anyway in order to maintain the accuracy
of
> > the
> > >collection?
> >
> > Not necessarily, because "accuracy" is relative & likely to change. If
you
> > go thru the drawers of any museum, you will frequently come upon pieces
of
> > papers in the specimen trays with names on them disagreeing with the
name of
> > those specimens in the official catalogue. These are the notes placed
there
> > by "experts" who have disagreed with the names in the catalogue. (I am
not
> > deriding anybody here; I have done the same thing.) Here's an example of
the
> > difficulty & futility of maintaining up to date names in a catalogue.
There
> > is a common & well known edible land snail known to most people as Helix
> > aspersa. But some taxonomists prefer to call it Cantareus aspersus,
while
> > others prefer Cornu aspersum & yet others would rather call it
Cryptomphalus
> > aspersus. This species was described in 1774! You would think that we
would
> > have agreed on a name by now. So, which name should we pick for our
> > catalogue? Who cares? What really matters is that there be good location
&
> > collector data & date for a particular specimen.
> >
> > Aydin
>
>