Science and Trouble-shooting

The last few weeks have found me working on a variety of projects in the Herbarium. I have been helping Emilie organize the cabinets prior to annotation, instead of during/after, and we have found that it is a far more efficient process. I am sure that all Herbariums, or libraries, for that matter, have the issues that we came face-to-face with these last few weeks. It was alarming to me to discover that within our Juncaceae shelves, (in fact, within most of the families) nothing was organized alphabetically or even by species. Specimens had been placed randomly back in the correct family, but not in the correct genus or species folders. Emilie had discovered this same problem within Cabinet 3 and 4, which is why it took so long to organize and annotate the monocots, especially since she was working alone then.

So, Adriane and I have begun dedicating part of our week to organizing the cabinets prior to Emilie's name-checks and annotations. Even though it means handling the specimens slightly more, it makes the entire process go by faster and more smoothly. This is especially because we encountered huge stacks of specimens that were completely unaccessioned. Without accession numbers, the specimens cannot be placed in our database, nor can they be tracked in any way. In the last two weeks, I must have accessioned at least three hundred specimens, just within Cabinet 5!

I also spent the last two weeks learning more of the ups and downs of the digitization process. We had some trouble with the software, but Michael Giddens was an invaluable help, and now I can proceed with my photographing. I was not bothered by the early software glitches, since it is a brand new program, and we are some of the first guinea pigs to use it. I am gaining more confidence with the software as I realize that it is actually fairly difficult to make a mistake with the photographing itself. The software warns me if I take two photographs without scanning a barcode, or if I scan the same barcode twice. I found the overwrite feature of the software particularly helpful last week, because I had to rephotograph multiple specimens, and I was petrified that I might have to wade through the computer's hard-drive, trying to delete the correct photos before I could retake them. With Michael's help, however, I discovered that the overwrite is extremely easy. You simply rephotograph the specimen, rescan it, and a box pops up letting you know that the barcode is already in the database and associated with a photo. You tell it to overwrite the previous photo, and the deed is done.

I can see such a feature coming in very  handy in the future. I am learning that science, and especially systematics, is an extremely recursive, dynamic process. The phylogenies of plants and their organization--even their names--are constantly evolving.This is especially true because of the recent advances in genetics and technology. The easy overwrite feature will make it simple to rephotograph specimens in the future if they have had to be annotated or re-accessioned for any reason.

Although the last two weeks have been full of trouble-shooting, they have also been very informative, and I have confidence that Emilie, Adriane, and I will continue to discover more efficient ways of completing our mission: the complete reorganization and digitization of 25,000 specimens.

Until next time,

Abigail H.