Catalogue card detail.

Hi all,

Question... How much or how little information is necessary for the Locality section of a collection card ?
I am having some cards made up, and then realised just how little room there is to play with.
Maybe just the Mine, State, and Country would suffice ?

Steve.

Since locality is absolutely key, I would err on the side of full inclusion rather than looking to limit the entry. --Ken

I have several specimens from locations with the same mine name and the same state, but from different counties within the state (and therefor, different mines), and also a couple that I've acquired from older collections with mine name and state, but can't determine which one they belong to, so I agree with Ken.

You can always write on the back of the card any extra detail that would be useful, while leaving the front for more general detail such as name, mine,county and state.

Stephen,
The amount of information you can put on a label depends on the size of the label and how small a print you can comfortably read. If you print your labels on a computer you can put several times as much legible data on your labels as you can if you print it by hand. There are three kinds of labels you may want to make for your specimens. One is a specimen label that you glue right onto the specimens. This is the most important kind. The second most important kind is a box label which is sometimes called a tombstone label. This kind of label stands upright against one end of the box that you keep your specimens in. The text on this kind of label should be printed up as high as possible on the label so that the specimen obscures as little of the text as possible. This enables the label to be read without removing the label from the box and more importantly cuts down on touching the specimen, like rolling it forward so the text printed further down on the label can be read. The least important kind of label you will find in the long run is the display label. The text on these labels for best appearance in a display case is centered left to right and top to bottom. I find that on my specimen labels that I can use five or six point fonts and place the species, full locality, chemical forumla, collection name and number on the label. Of course if your specimens are TNs or Micros you can't do this, but you can put all this data on the boxes that they go in.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Nailed it!.
My thanks to all, everyone was helpful.

Best,
Steve.

Hi Steve. Why don't you include the Mindat locality page number?

Regards
Steve

Hello Steve,

Mate, what an excellent solution. I will follow up on that one.

Cheers,
Steve.

As much as I respect, love, and constantly use Mindat, I wouldn't use any cataloging method that requires Mindat. Will the data format on Mindat be the same in twenty years? Will urls remain unchanged? Will Mindat even exist? Instead, I would copy the data to my own index (in my cases, an excel spreadsheet), and keep electronic and printed copies of that index.

Steve,

Mindat URLs will be the same in 20 years that they are now.

Will mindat exist? Yes. There is too much invested in it by too many people for it to stop. At least until the inevitable Zombie Apocalypse, nothing much will stop mindat carrying on as it is.

What's to say the format of your Excel spreadsheet will still be loadable in 20 years time?

(and anyway, the mindat catalogue can be downloaded into Excel as a CSV file whenever you want)

Jolyon

Jolyon,

I recognize that my spreadsheet may not be readable in twenty years, or even by the next computer I buy. That's why I print it out, or at least try to remember to. The Guttenburg bible is definitely old-school technology, but still easily parsable today.

Steve, what I was suggesting is the number on the card with minimum locality details, and use the Mindat reference with the full locality on your catalogue of choice, Excel, paper or whatever.

Regards
Steve

Another bit of information to consider on specimen labels is some hint of why you kept it. Keep it short and sweet: "Note c-face on crystals," "Unusual assemblage for this mineral," "Historic specimen, ex. Palache coll.", etc. You can't count on people coming after you to recognize specimen significance in all instances, and they may well discard a specimen they regard as "junk" without knowing what a treasure they've just thrown away.

I just turned 62, and am hustling to get my social security benefits before the system folds up.

I would guess that I have two million self collected specimens from 4,000 localities.

I once could recognize each piece like an old friend's face.

Now, I am often clueless about the source a piece on my counter, and just toss such pieces into a 5 gallon bucket unless they are pretty and maybe good to give to the kids who scavenge my alley or who attend the Seattle Mineral Market.

For thirty years I have used M-410 boxes with locality info written on the edge face for my self collected or bulk materials obtained from other dealers. It is a good system..

Now, every orphan specimen on my counter that I can verify gets put in a sandwich bag with some kind of hand written label, but I wonder who will care after I'm gone..

Label making and curation in general is a tedious thing that I discover gets no more interesting with each passing day.

I'm a bad person, but I do have a huge bag of old labels. My favorites are David Shannon's. My least favorites are John C. Whites who printed with a fountain pen in 3 point type size on super flimsy nicotine stained paper, but he lists the the complete history of each specimen. John's labels need a stereomicroscope to read.

I'll admit they are kind of fun to review since he listed every price he paid since 1950 from long dead dealers. Usually $1.50.

I once bought a DYMO computer based thermal label maker. It will print a label in 4 point one label at a time, but I am too lazy to actually print the labels and each one costs about fifteen cents.

Lazy Bart