Subject: RE: Organizing Slides
Date: Jun 18 13:43:37 1997
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at ups.edu


Hi tweeters,

I'm responding to both messages below, forwarded to me by Dan Victor.

Museum collections have *lots* of data associated with specimens, far more
than you could squeeze onto a slide label. I think most of Rick's items are
essential (not the scientific name, and SAS name not in the database, and
see below), and Michael's items are also essential. Those items should be
written on the slide as well, as some people who use the slides may not
know enough about the birds to know their age, sex, and plumage.

On my slides I consider the *most important* information the locality and
date of the photo. That's where the SAS slide collection might deviate
greatly from a museum collection, in which the most important thing is to
know whence and when the specimen. I consider this information a lot more
important than Rick's items 3, 4, and 5. The reason it might be important
to a user of your slides is that a locality would give you an indication of
geographic variation (darker Downies west of Cascades, whiter east, etc.),
and the date can give you an indication of plumage and perhaps age. Gulls
and shorebirds, for example, show feather wear progressively over the year,
and knowing the date on a photo is really helpful.

I suspect a lot of the photos you have don't have locality and date
information, and they will still be of value. A nice photo of a male
Western Tanager doesn't have to have *anything* written on it and can still
be useful.

There are computer slide-labeling programs. If you have a PC, ask Dave
Nunnallee (davidn at nwlink.com) about the one he uses.

I've heard of four-letter words being associated with birds, but I thought
they were only used for missed rarities.

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 18 Jun 97 17:40:19 UT
>From: Michael Hobbs <MJCT_Hobbs at msn.com>
>Reply-To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Subject: RE: Organizing Slides
>
>I am just trying to figure this out for my own slide collection. Wouldn't
>age, sex, and plumage be worth noting? How are skins cataloged at the Burke
>and the Slater? I would think similar cataloging could be used with slides.
>
>== Michael Hobbs
>----------
>From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu on behalf of Rick Romea
>Reply To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
>Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 1997 7:14 AM
>To: Tweeters Post
>Subject: Organizing Slides
>
>Hi Tweeters,
>
>The Seattle Audubon Society has recently acquired a nice collection of
>slides of photographs (many from D. Paulson), paintings and drawings of
>birds of North America. This adds to the already large collection already
>at SAS. The SAS education coordinator and I have been working on trying
>to come up with an effective way to catalog the collection and create a
>database. I thought we could use the four letter banding codes, rather
>than arbitrary numbers, as a database 'look-up' label, and each slide
>would be labeled with
>
>(1) the four letter code
>(2) common name
>(3) slide number for that bird (e.g., 4th MODO slide)
>(4) copy Letter (A = original, B = copy 1, etc.)
>(5) photo credit
>(6) SAS label
>
>Additional information that could be included on the slide: scientific
>name (but we're running out of space)
>
>I have no experience with this sort of thing. Does anybody have any
>comments or suggestions?
>
>Rick Romea

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html