Specimen provenance

Needed by whom and when

Basic statements about who needs the functionality and by when.

UCJEPS: Some functions needed by the time they move to CollectionSpace as their production system

Overview

UCJEPS and UC Botanical Garden (and presumably most natural history collections) have some complex needs around the recording and expression of specimen provenance. This quickly blurs into a discussion about geographic capabilities.  The location where a specimen was located is recorded on labels affixed to specimen sheets.  However, the level and quality of information varies significantly from sheet to sheet.  Provenance information can include higher level geography as well as specific localities and can include habitat information too.

Sometimes the specimen does not have an identified provenance.  In that case, the system might need to print out the geographic range associated with that species according to published citations.  In the UC Botanical Garden for instance, if there is no field collection information for the specimen, they want the geographic range of the species to be printed on the label that identifies the specimen in the garden (with an indication that this is the range not the field collection site).

UCJEPS also needs to record miscellaneous information about provenance, including other gardens that collected the specimen.  See "Miscellaneous provenance" user story below.

User stories for definition

Please feel to rewrite these or eliminate completely!  Then move to the prioritized headings below.

Specimen provenance: User can record the specimen field collection location as identified on the specimen sheet (or in field notes) in a verbatim fashion as well as in fields tied to controlled vocabularies.

Specimen provenance: In certain outputs (reports, labels?), user can indicate that the geographic range of the species be printed if there is no specimen field location or provenance provided.

Specimen provenance: Miscellaneous provenance information - Miscellaneous label header information as expressed on label and herbarium sheets, e.g., "Ex. Herb. Berol." (Originally from Berlin Herbarium), "Phycotheca Boreali Americana" (from the break up of a bound set), "The Sixth Expedition to the Andes".

Prioritization of user stories

As definitions and priorities are clarified, the user stories above should be moved into relative order below.

Must have for 1.x-MUSEUM (when they go live in system)

Placeholder for required functionality.  As a general rule, functionality that you need and use now should go here or where you have existing data.  However, this is up to the museum.  We will have to balance requirements against resources and timelines.

Placeholder

MUSEUM could wait six to twelve months

What could wait?  These will be re-prioritized at a later date.

Placeholder

MUSEUM would like to have this eventually

These are nice to have but not a near term requirement.

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