Smarter Catalog Numbering

Specify needs a smarter numbering system capable of:

  • Reservation of (blocks of) catalog numbers
  • Checking on already existing numbers upon data entry
  • Skip already existing numbers upon data import
  • Check for unused catalog numbers and start using those (preferably in backwards direction down to a baseline number e.g. 999)

The current method is quite crude and is basically just starting from the highest number for a given collection, which is a problem, since we’re using the same numbering system across our collections.

This issue is also discussed here:

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You can do all that by just turning the auto-numbering off (or not turning it on). I think this is something collections have to do for themselves, as each collection’s requirements will be different.

But then you will lose the auto-numbering.

Well, yes, but it seems that you do not want the auto-numbering that Specify provides, but rather implement your own numbering system.

I do want the auto-numbering. I just want it to be smarter.

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I have a use case that shows how important a smarter numbering system, as detailed in my OP, can be.

Last week, an inexperienced user unwittingly manually entered the catalogue number NHMD-2000000 (2 million!) for a specimen record meaning that we were skipping more than 800,000 catalogue numbers, which is a bit much.

To regain the skipped numbers and start counting up again from where we were before that (namely at NHMD-1184957) I needed to re-allocate all catalogue numbers generated since.

This caused an issue for at least one end user that just happened to have given the catalogue numbers of a couple of specimens for a new publication. He had to hurry to write the authors to have the catalogue numbers changed again before they sent the publication off to the journal.

If Specify had the smarter numbering system as requested, then we wouldn’t have this issue, but the system would eventually simply fill out any gaps there may occur in the number series.

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