RoDuth
commented
8 years ago All these seem to be issues about being a Botanic Garden management system rather than a Living Collection Database (which is what Bauble current is) I can see some of these as additions to the Bauble suite of tools (as in independent pieces of software that talk, like what Ghini and Bauble.web are to Bauble.classic) - Bauble.seedbank anyone?
(a), (b), (c) as we don't currently do these I wont comment past saying that I think this would need to be another, linked, module and that it wouldn't be hard to generate an Index Semina with an appropriate report template (assuming this module supported the same method.)
(d) We also house a fairly large collection of library books but this is part of the council's corporate library and we are considered a satellite site. All our books are purchased through them and catalogued on their system which is available online and I am more than happy to leave the library to the librarians on council. I'm not sure I understand why you would want Bauble to catalogue your library when there is plenty of open source Library software out there (if there was a need for it I'm sure you could get them to link with Bauble, beauty of open source) see: https://foss4lib.org/
(e), (f), while I don't currently record any of this (have never had to retrieve the info past the point of looking in my email archive) I would suggest that it would be simple enough to use a notes category for this and an appropriate report template possibly.
(g) This one surprises me, almost all our herbarium vouchers are taken from plants within our living collection or from the parent material, the main objective of our herbarium is to identify our collection to as high a standard as possible (i.e. a 2, 3 or, rarely, 4 in the verifications tab) so duplicates are also made and sent to the Queensland Herbarium, many of which they keep. Meaning that it is usual to have 2 entries (one for MRBG herbarium one for BRI herbarium) for vouchers for any one accession and not uncommon to have as many as 4. I know of at least 3 other gardens that I believe work the same way and I'm sure there are many more in Australia that work that way if I was to ask around. We do have plenty of other vouchers in another archived herbarium we inherited from the local Parks and Wildlife department when it shut the herbarium down but we have no resources or time to curate it so it is essentially undocumented at this point. I would expect that if you wanted an herbarium database you could use Bauble the way it is by creating accessions and attaching vouchers, using the "collection" in "source" to place the location of collection info etc. To avoid too many accessions with 0 plants I would be inclined to do this by creating 2 separate databases (and connections), one for the normal Living Collection, one for the Herbarium (where I would use my voucher numbers as my accession numbers). Maybe even one of the "bauble.lite" versions that we have spoken about could be for this purpose with the parts that make no sense in the herbarium context removed? Possibly could take the same approach for the seed bank?
@tmyersdn sounds to me like you have just created another 6 months of work for a developer... Any ideas how to fund that! :smile: Can just see @mfrasca getting the cold sweats! :cold_sweat:
mfrasca
some thoughts for Friday afternoon @mfrasca @RoDuth @brettatoms
(a) Record seed collected, cleaned and stored +/- garden accession number (seed can be from a garden plant or from the wild or from another garden) +/- images +/- transfer on request to contact (ie send to another garden) +/- voucher specimen +/- inclusion in seed list NB: it is not ideal to generate a new garden “accession” or “plant” to record seed collected. Is it possible to have seed collection records independently numbered?
(b) Production of a seed list from a subset of the list of stored seed Examples: http://www.dipbot.unict.it/indexseminum/Index_O_B_Catania_2015.pdf http://dehortus.indexseminum.org/Files/Catalogue.pdf http://botgart.hip.uni-heidelberg.de/images/Index_Seminum_Heidelberg_2014_15.pdf NB: Index Semina usually are lists of names with code numbers for ordering. In many cases, the lists start at number 1 and continue sequentially for the whole list. But in some cases, a collection number is used, assigned like an accession number at the time of collection. And these numbers are used in the list. This is messier, as an alphabetical list of plant names will usually have non-sequential numbers.
(c) contacts could include a flag for receipt of seed list and email address to use for the seed list.
(d) library books We have a small working library of approximately 1200 books. Do you want us to store these in a spreadsheet or Bauble?
(e) requests We receive requests for live plants, plant material (leaves etc) and seed. Vouchers and images could also be requested. It would be good to be able to “insert a request”, this could be acted on or refused.
(f) transfers We give material away reasonably often, sometimes for research use, sometimes for education, sometimes for public request. In each case we need to be careful that we have permission to do this. So it is important to us to be able to record “transfer”. It would be good to be able to “insert a transfer”. This could relate to plants, plant material, seed, vouchers, images, books. It would be good for this entry area to generate text for an email recording the transfer (ie transfer number, accession number, plant name etc)
(g) voucher specimens without accessions We have a small herbarium of about 1000 vouchers, most are weeds or wild plants, so they have no associated accession numbers. But they do have a unique herbarium voucher number, applied using an incrementing number stamp. At present Bauble does not seem set up to handle vouchers unless they are from an accessed plant. I think this does not fit the needs of a working herbarium, where vouchers may come from the wild or from another garden. They may be donated by an independent collector. Vouchers need to be given independence from Plants. Is this possible?