Analysis of SMaSCH Voucher Types

The voucher table in SMaSCH has evolved over time. In the words of Dick Moe: "The voucher concept allows you to invent a category and then associate an accession number with that category, sometimes with additional information stored as well." Some voucher records contain additional information, while others just indicate that the specimen sheet has an annotation about this category of information. Initially it was hoped that images of all specimen sheets would be available and linked to the specimen metadata. Also, "As you can imagine, many of the voucher categories were not used identically by the different data enterers."

Our approach will be to identify voucher information that logically belongs somewhere else, either in an existing CollectionSpace schema or in custom fields that we will add to a schema. Many of these new custom fields will likely be needed by other herbaria and even by other natural history collections, so some indication of broader utility should be included.

Lam performed a count by voucher type to produce the following table.

Count	Voucher Type	Defined	Migration	Note (and count of non-null descr field)
149	anatomy			non-null descr: 13
245422	annotation history	Indicates identification annotations on the sheet as a fraction. Demoninator = how many annotations, and numerator = number of different names used. There is an annotation history TABLE that has more complete information and is being used again.	Might not be useful at all. Maybe keep data though not in the interface.	non-null: 245394
77544	associated species	sometimes contains a list (uncontrolled) of other plants that grew where the specimen grew, and sometimes just indicates that such information is there	Custom field needed, repeatable.	non-null: 15320
344	biotic environment -inactive 7/93			non-null: 5
3161	biotic interactions			non-null: 245
56184	color	usually contains information : e.g., "ray flowers fading in the afternoon", "young leaves reddish"		non-null: 55986
11305	common name			non-null: 2039
5602	cytology			non-null: 629
43463	data in packet	nearly always indicates that there is an old label or note in a packet on the sheet.		non-null: 825
10	embryology			non-null: 3
269	ethnobotany			non-null: 25
281	Expedition			non-null: 2
8	fruit removal			non-null: 1
123	genbank code			non-null: 123
251542	habitat	indicates that there is information associated with habitat on the label or sheet. For the habitat voucher, that information is nearly always transcribed into the database. For example "in dense shade on red clay"		Not controlled vocabulary though some domains have a pick list to help with habitat information. One locality can have multiple habitats. Non-null: 251531
3813	horticulture			non-null: 483
2965	illustration			non-null: 38
5370	image made			non-null: 4035
4	Insect damage			non-null: 4
88712	macromorphology			non-null: 18847
2141	map			non-null: 1157
805	material removed			non-null: 375
7327	micromorphology			non-null: 353
3545	nomenclature			non-null: 9
26422	none			non-null: 2370
232	nucleic acids			non-null: 231
16	number collision			non-null: 16
1330	odor			non-null: 809
809	other			non-null: 809
18880	other label numbers			non-null: 18870
4641	phenology			non-null: 104
875	photograph			non-null: 104
15	physical enviroment			non-null: 15
1878	physical environment			non-null: 1878
513	physical environment -inactive 7/93			non-null: 4
56726	population biology			non-null: 14321
30685	publication			non-null: 2057
7836	reference used for determination			non-null: 16
66913	reproductive biology			non-null: 7158
584	secondary product chemistry			non-null: 88
56	SEM (Scanning Electron Micrograph)			non-null: 4
11355	type			non-null: 11001
98	U.C. Botanical Garden			non-null: 98
25733	Vegetation Type Map Project			non-null: 25637