Read an old collection label

1. Do not clean, flatten, tape or trim the label. Photograph it front and back at high resolution with a scale, into the vault, before you do anything else. Store the original flat in a polyester sleeve in the specimen's tray.

2. Transcribe exactly — spelling, abbreviations, punctuation, crossings-out — into the record's prior label field, with [illegible] where you cannot read it. Decode in a separate note. The transcription is evidence; the decoding is your opinion.

3. Read the handwriting as a period hand: long s, ligatures, the copperplate capital that looks like another letter. Compare with dated labels from the same source if you have them. Dealer labels (Ward's Natural Science Establishment, Krantz, Stürtz, Bryce Wright, Damon, Sowerby) have known printed formats and can be dated by the printed address.

4. Decode the name. Old identifications use superseded genera and species (“Ammonites bifrons”, “Calymene blumenbachii”, “Terebratula”): look them up in the PBDB or the Treatise for the current name, and record both — the old name on the label is what a researcher searching the literature will match.

5. Decode the locality. Place names change (St Petersburg/Leningrad, Bohemia, “Lyme”), counties are reorganised, and many labels give only a town or a quarry that no longer exists. Note the modern equivalent and the formation it implies, and note your uncertainty.

6. Decode the number. A collection number on the label ties the piece to a catalogue that may survive in a museum, a society or a family; a prefix or a hand can identify the collection. Record it as a prior number and search the museum catalogues (NHM, Smithsonian, Sedgwick) for the collector's name.

7. Record the source chain: label says X, bought from Y in year Z, Y's catalogue number. Each link is a line on the provenance record. The label plus the chain is what turns an old piece into an “ex-collection” piece with a name on it — and the name is what the market pays for.