[Taxacom] How to trace publications based on collections in specific herbaria and/or museums?

[Roderic Page]

This is one of the "use cases" I had in mind when discussing the potential uses for digital identifiers for specimens (see blog post http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2012/01/yet-another-reason-why-we-need-specimen.html )

The request to find all papers citing museum material is, in principle, reasonable, but the museum has failed to provide the tools to make this happen. I'd be tempted to respond to the museum administrators with an explanation of why answering their query efficiently would require the museum to have digital identifiers for their specimens (in the same way we have identifiers for articles).  

At the same time, I'd be tempted to make the short trip to GBIF ask why they've been so tardy in addressing this issue.

I'm aware that this doesn't help you in the short term. Various ways to tackle the problem might be:

1. Search Google Scholar for the museum name in the year 2011 (if the authors use the abbreviation they are likely to explain what it means.

2. Retrieve a list of all animal and plant names published in 2011, get the associated publications and search for the museum's name (much of this could be automated once the PDFs are downloaded)

3. Search GenBank using museum specimen abbreviation codes to find sequences (and associated publications) obtained from material from the museum.

Regards

Rod


On 18 Jan 2012, at 10:32, Ib Friis wrote:

> Dear Taxacom-readers,
> 
> It is getting more and more necessary for taxonomists to demonstrate
> that they are useful and used. This does not only apply to the
> individual scientists, but also to institutions with taxonomic
> collections, such as museums and herbaria. 
> 
> In an attempt to live up to that increasing demand for documentation,
> the leadership of the Natural History Museum of Denmark has issued an
> order to its curatorial staff - The staff members are requested to
> document which publications from 2011, written entirely by external
> scientists, that in one way or another are based on material in the
> collections of the Museum. It is added that "this may be difficult, but
> very important for the documentation of the use of the collections. Try
> to get all the scientists that borrow material to inform you about their
> publications and supplement this information with your own search within
> reasonable limits."
> 
> To find publications that are based on collections in the Natural
> History Museum of Denmark is indeed a difficult task. As curator of the
> herbarium of vascular plants at the Museum, I know that my particular
> section of the Museum has 950 outstanding loans to scientists all over
> the world, including institutions in the developing countries. The loans
> of herbarium specimens are normally made to institutions, not directly
> to individual scientists, so even if I wrote to all 950 and asked them
> if they have published anything on our collections in 2011, I am not
> sure that the message would reach all. 
> 
> A more practicable solution might be to use digital search for
> electronic publications that quote the herbarium acronym. However, for
> the herbaria of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, which is situated
> in Copenhagen, this acronym is "C". We have normally been rather proud
> to be an old institution that has a single character as its acronym, but
> in this case it is rather unfortunate, like it must be for other well
> known herbaria with acronyms like "A", "B", "E", "F", "G", "H", "J",
> "K", "L", "M", "N", "O", "P", "Q", "R", "S", "U", "V", "Y" and "Z". 
> 
> In publications, material from our herbarium at "C" is normally referred
> to in text strings of one of the following forms: "(C)", "(C, ", ", C,"
> or " C)". But a search in for example Google Scholar or other search
> engines  result in overflow of thousands and thousands of hits, even
> when these text strings are combined with other relevant words such as
> "botany", "plants", etc. - It can be added that this is a specific
> problem for the botanists - the curators of the zoological and
> geological collections are lucky that their collections have acronyms
> with a characteristic sting of four letters.
> 
> Has any of the Taxacom-readers good ideas about how it might be possible
> to specifically document answers to the (unfortunately relevant)
> question about the use of the botanical collections of the Copenhagen
> Natural History Museum - and of other herbaria with similarly
> insignificant acronyms?
> 
> Hoping for a good idea and with best wishes, 
> 
> Ib Friis
> Professor, dr. scient., curator of vascular plants
> Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen
> ibf at snm.ku.dk
> 
> 
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> 

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
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