Our collection grant is active and spendable, so now’s the time to get serious about our objectives. The biggest projects will happen in the fall and over the holiday break in December/January, but we’ve already started fixing, digitizing, and otherwise preparing the Beatty collection for its new digs. Our draft (emphasis on the word draft, at least at the time of this writing!) workflow is available as a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) document: draft Odonata SOP
Please comment on this proposed process, especially if you have expertise in Odonata and/or digitizing and/or insect curation in general. Our goals are:
- Image each specimen with its original collecting event label and a unique identifier label.
- Extract specimens from their temporary field envelopes (see image above) and rehouse them in clear cellophane envelopes.
- Move all specimens into acid-free storage, inside sealed, purpose-built cabinets. (No more cigar boxes on open shelves!)
- Convert all photographs to digital records (through crowd-sourcing, probably).
I’ve already had one odonatologist tell me: “Photographing specimens would … be faster than scanning. Still, I think it is a waste of resources. Our funding world might be sufficiently Alice-in-Wonderland that money would be available for this purpose! The taxpayer in me quivers a bit …” That was before seeing our test image (stitch errors and all; see original 16000 x 10000 image). I’m still committed to imaging all specimens, as it provides—minimally—a source for error checking. Thoughts?