how-to request - How To Catalog a Lot #323
Description
Although Arctos has excellent support for cataloging lots, there is no documentation for this. We should create a new How-to page called "How To Catalog a Lot" which goes over this in detail.
As a starting point, here is some advice I received from Mariel Campbell by email:
As for cataloging lots, yes, it is completely possible and up to the individual collection to decide. In fact, a group of specimens can be cataloged as a lot, and then one or more individuals from that lot can later be split out and recataloged as an individual record, for example, for an individual that has a unique GenBank sequence. This separate record can be reciprocally linked back to the original lot through shared identifiers, "same lot as" relationships, and common collecting events.
See below for examples. Note that the parts section shows the quantity/lot count of individuals in the record - in some cases there are multiple individuals in a single "part" = lot, lumped together with a Qty lot count of multiple individuals; in other records cataloged as lots, each fish is listed as a separate part in the lot with qty = 1. The latter method allows for additional metadata to be included for each fish.
https://arctos.database.museum/guid/MSB:Fish:10024
https://arctos.database.museum/guid/MSB:Fish:45448
Similarly, you can add multiple attributes of the same type to a lot, or you can choose to separate out individuals either as parts within the lot or as separate catalog records each with their own attributes or part attributes. A record can have more than one sex or life stage attribute; for example. If there are both males and females or adults and juveniles in the lot, you just add both attributes, and you can use attribute remarks to add numbers of each. You can also add this info to part attribute remarks.
Here are some examples from our parasite collection
https://arctos.database.museum/guid/MSB:Para:30954
https://arctos.database.museum/guid/MSB:Para:51919
Other things that should be mentioned include the "individual count" attribute and the fact that you can record multiple "sex" and "life stage" attributes per catalog record (which apparently are combined when submitted to GBIF). It would also be helpful to provide examples of how to link separated records back to their original lots (I couldn't find any information on how to create the mentioned "same lot as" relationship).