It was not without confusion, stress, many months of work and a few learning opportunities that the CMC Herbarium has been finally organized according to APG III standards. We endured sweat, laughter, anxiety, tears, and random outbursts of singing to reach this point, but we finally made it!
I first want to make a point that this re-organization was no venture for the faint of heart. Asteraceae was in Cabinet 3 next to Solanaceae, Araceae was next to Rubiaceae in Cabinet 9, and specimens of Adoxaceae were spread throughout many different cabinets.
The horror!
The past members of the CMC Herbarium should be commended for their courage in the face of such turmoil. I myself only joined this endeavor a few months ago after many other interns, grad students, and volunteers faced the daunting realization that they would have to completely reorganize the Herbarium. This challenge included accessioning, data basing, name verifying, and beginning the process of bar-coding and digitizing more than 25,000 specimens individually.
The questions we asked ourselves:
Were all specimens of the same Family in one designated area?
Were all of the specimens correctly organized according to a set standard of organization?
The CMC Herbarium is a perfect example of starting from the bottom. Our facility would have answered "No" to all of the above questions five years ago, but through diligence and support we are now in ship-shape!
The Breakdown:
To start the organization process, interns had to go through each specimen within each folder to verify that the correct species were together. It took a lot of time, and by that I mean months, to go through each folder and group the correct Families together.
After that, we databased. We counted the number of each species in each Family and put all of that information on a Excel spreadsheet. This helped with name verifying, annotating and giving us an idea of how much space a particular Family might take up in the cabinet.
After all of our specimens were databased and name verified (fewph!), it was decided that our Herbarium should follow the organization standards set by APG III.
Abigail and I took the list of all the Families in the CMC and compared it to the linear order of organization on APG III list. We highlighted the names of specimens in the Herbarium that appeared on the APG list. From that we typed up a Master List showing the order that our Families would soon be organized in.
Using the database to show us the current order and our newly made Master List, we started shifting the Families, and in our case, we worked from the end of the list to the beginning. We had an extra four empty cabinets to expand on and we used those to put the last names on the list in and worked from that direction forward. For instance, Apiaceae is the last Family in the CMC to appear on the APG III list. So we put Apiaceae in the last shelves of Cabinet 20. The Family to appear before Apiaceae is Araliaceae, so we put Araliaceae in the shelves above Apiaceae. Before Araliaceae is Caprifoliaceae, and so on.
Since all of our specimens were annotated, accessioned, and grouped alphabetically with their Family, the process of putting the Families in APG III order was relatively quick and easy!
Things I'm Glad Happened While Re-Organizing:
1. I mentally prepared myself. I was fore-warned that the collection was in disorder and that I myself, would inevitably make mistakes and overlook details while training. There were times I had to completely re-do work that I thought I had done correctly. It was frustrating but I learned a lot in the process.
2. I had a partner. It was good to have someone look over my work. It would be awful to work on hundreds of specimens alone and later find that all of your efforts were wasted over a simple mistake.
Having Abigail and Adriane correct me was extremely helpful and efficient.
3. I took some time to enjoy the specimens and looked forward to the relief that I will feel after completing the organization. This motivated me!
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