Do not edit the storage tree unless:
- you are Cissy Geigerman
- have the curators approval!
- NPL has migrated from a system where drawers were numbered per cabinet, starting with 1 at the upper left hand side, and counting up until all drawers had a number. Switching to Specify, with the storage tree system, we quickly saw some issues with this method. For example, imagine you are entering a new CO for Drawer 2. There are nearly 100 drawer 2's in the main building and over 300 over in the cages. This creates a hassle when having to scroll through so many entries!
- In a perfect world, whoever updated the drawer number would have edited the old drawer number in the storage tree to reflect this change. In the real world, this happened most of the time. The other times, the new drawer was added to the tree.
- As of spring of 2016, the procedure is to merge the drawers (or edit the records, if there are only a couple of specimens) and keep the repeating (low) number. ONLY staff members should perform this action, or approve student or volunteers editing the tree.
- There is a project in the works to reassign all of the repeating drawer numbers, but this will not happen until ALL of the specimens are moved from the old databases to Specify.