Talk:Units and their IDs

Starting points / recommendations
 * 1) ABCD/HISPID UnitID is a catalogue number, not some other identifier, see: abcd:UnitID, hispid:accid, dwc:catalogNumber.
 * 2) Catalogue numbers are identifiers and are opaque and indivisible: there is no meaning in the catalogue number or in any part of it. Catalogue numbers are not big-endian, little-endian or somewhere-in-the-middleian, so you can't query for them – in any but your own database – using wildcards.
 * 3) Solutions for specific cases, such as mixed collections, multiple specimens or sets of label data on the same sheet, and specimens divided over multiple sheets, should be contained to the situation at hand and should isolate any problems, not smear them out over the entire collection.
 * 4) Curation practices, in particular in relation to the catalogue number, may affect the usability of the data and should consider use outside the institution as well.
 * 5) Suffixes might be okay, for strictly internal use, but shouldn't be depended on to make catalogue numbers unique (see 4).
 * 6) The catalogue number is what links the AVH record to the specimen, so catalogue numbers that are delivered to AVH should be the same as the number on the specimen (2, 4) or people using the specimens or looking up a cited specimen will not be able to find the record in AVH. Local knowledge or methods in place at institutions to relate barcodes to catalogue numbers are not available to external users of our specimens and specimen data.