Reference Manual

1The
two groupings are "entities" in technical terms, but we will refer to them as the Primary Relation or Table
and the Locality Relation or Table.
3-1
3 Some MUSE Concepts
MUSE software design is based upon a logical model of the information typically
present in the collection records of natural history museums. To create our data
model, we used computer systems analysis techniques to model natural history
collection data and an examination of standard curatorial practices. Other
examples of data models presented to represent collections data include Blum &
Novecek (1990), based primarily on vertebrate paleontology and Lindbergh
(1991), who presents a composite view of collections' data based on a survey of
numerous disciplines. The MUSE Data Model (MDM) shares some features with
these other efforts but is unique as presented in detail below. To help
illustrate how the MUSE model represents typical museum data consider this
basic example:
A collector, working at a single place on a single day, obtains five specimens of
each of two species. Some information about those 10 specimens is obviously
common to all of them (collector, place, date) while other data is specific to each
specimen (or species).
In a similar way in MUSE we divide collection data into separate groups of
unique taxonomic/specimen information and common locality/habitat
1 information. This means that the taxonomic data associated with each specimen
(or species, depending upon curatorial tradition) will be recorded separately (two
or 10 catalog numbers) and the collection site information will be recorded only
once.
The immediate benefits of this data model include: efficient data entry, efficient
use of disk storage and perhaps most importantly, data integrity when altering
individual data records (see below). Long term results of data modeling (in
general) include producing a systematic view of curatorial data and practices
which encourages efficient management of that data. Where research efforts
overlap with curatorial data (e.g. biogeographic studies), the data will be
available in a fashion that makes clear the exact relationships among the various
components. It is also this shared data model which allows the various functions
of MUSE (loans, labels, pop-up summaries) to function regardless of the exact
nature of the information recorded with each catalog entry.
Two conceptually important fields in MUSE are catalog number and field number
(or site name/date). Every action in MUSE utilizes one of these two pieces of
information to store or extract data.
3 Some MUSE Concepts