[Rockhounds] I D Numbers when cataloging

[J. R. Hodel]

Hi:

Alan's remarks about computer science are in general correct.  In my career as an information technologist with the Department of  Environmental Protection, I have seen many schemes devised by scientists to embed data into identification  numbers.  This is a misuse of the ID number, which should only be a unique identifier.

The permit number issued by WV DEP for coal mines, for example, embeds a permit type, region ID, the year the application was received, and a counter per region of how many applications were received before the permit in question was submitted, all in a 7-character field.  All this data is captured in a more useful manner in other fields related to the permit ID.

Ideally, data keys should be information free, except for the fact of the key and its uniqueness.  This is practically so because in relational databases it is difficult ( sort of impossible) to change a key field when it contains a data item which is discovered to be in error later on, as key fields are usually propagated to other DB tables containing the real data fields about the item in question. 

Most recently, we usually assign an ID to a field that isn't even displayed to users when tracking documents, lists, event dates, etc.  For tracking something physical, like a rock, this isn't practical.  You need to label the rock with its ID, and use that ID to associate all the related data (minerals present, locale, date of accession, source, cost, etc) with the rock in question.

So (to be a little less technical) I'm recommending that you start with 00001 (or 0000001 if you're ambitious) for the first rock you pick up to catalog, and add 1 for each subesequent item to catalog.  Then put all the information about that rock on a record (index card, spreadsheet row, database table row) and identify that record with the same number randomly assigned to the rock.

If you're really OCD you'll have other database tables with all the mineral names, all the localities, all the dealers you've purchased from, all the collectors you've traded with, so that you can't make a mistake by referring to a non-existant mineral, a misspelled locality, etc.  That's creating a real database for your records.

That's not really OCD, it's just good computer science.

JR in WV




      

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