With much interest I was reading the comments on this subject.

It is obvious that the name is of secondary importance, compared to
the locality data.

The major part of catalogues, files etc...  are lost one or another day.

The principal thing is that the labels remain with the shells.

Everything of course depends on the purpose of the collection.

An aesthetic collection for display in a living room does not need
any labels: most of the shells are well known, have little scientific
value and will probably never end up in a museum.

A scientifically oriented collection can be small and one may try to
determinate all the shells accurately: this will never be a "big"
collection as the problems of determination are so gigantic that much
time and money will go into the library and museum visits, rather
than in the shells.

Major collections go down to the genus level in most cases. Easy to
determinate shells get the full name. All others are "species".

For many of the private collectors, living today in small homes,
compared to the wealthy collectors living in castles or gigantic
homes one or two centuries ago, the space problem comes on top of the
cataloguing.

I solved these problems only when 15 years ago I discovered large
plexi boxes, size of a shoe box, and I placed the shells in there by
family or genus, in zip-plastic bags, shells and labels together. One
can store easily 20000 sets in an average room of today, something
that otherwise will need hundreds of drawers.     In order not to
lose the aesthetic qualities, a display window in the living room or
the office will allow to enjoy the preferred pieces.

Today, as one is aware, the computer and the digital photography are
best to keep an update of what is in the collection or what is not.
For private persons I think FileMaker Pro is a top solution. And each
file corresponds either to one lot of shells or one shell, with the
photographs next to it.

Best regards, Guido

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