At 10:37 8/6/95, Lynn Kimsey wrote:
Somehow biologists always behave as if their problems, in this
case tracking specimens, lots of specimens or whatever, are
somehow unique. Has it ever occurred to any of you that industry
has not only managed but mastered how to track anything from
individual widgets to warehouses of stuff. As a result, if you look
outside the biological community you may be suprised to find that
these problems have already been solved in simple easy to
implement ways, usually with software and hardware available
off the shelf (so to speak).
I suspect that most people (not only biologists) and indeed non-humans with
the appropriate neural abilities, in most situations tend to think of
themselves as unique.
The same could be said of any kind of database needs. It is sheer
arrogance to assume that somehow our problems are unqiue and
that only we can solve them. I might add that an enormous amount
of federal funds have been wasted because of this attitude.
In this particular case, I do think that the inventory of biological
diversity is a little larger than most widget-manufacturers are faced with.
Most industrial institutions do not have the diversity that biological
collections are faced with. A second problem is that of long time
intervals. I have recently been tracking down (with a great degree of
success...not easily gotten, but success nonetheless) specimens that were
curated in the the 1820s in Europe. I would dare say that few industries
borrow things from other corportations that were manufactured and stored
175 years ago.
No, we are not unique in our database problems, but I think it a litlle
simplistic to assume that the corner software store has the answer to
creating a system of storing items and information regarding those items
that are not static in their location.
Cheers,
Lynn S. Kimsey
Bohart Museum of Entomology
Department of Entomology
University of California
Davis, CA 95616 USA
lskimsey at ucdavis.edu
7 messages in edu.ku.nhm.mailman.taxacomspecimens examined lists, again
