Are Organizations Defined as Museums or Divisional Collections?

An organization could be either an entire museum with all its divisions or a single divisional collection.  That is because the appropriate definition of an "organization" depends on many things.  It is important to remember that although different museums are handled differently in MorphoSource, this is a reflection of the state of the communities we support as opposed to "disorganization" within MorphoSource.  We use a variety of criteria to determine how to represent a given museum and its collections organizationally in MorphoSource.

Major examples of "organizations" in MorphoSource:

1. A single museum or university, inclusive of all of its collection divisions
2. A single collection division at a museum or university (implying that a single museum or university could have a number of "organizations" representing it)
3. A scanning facility
4. A researcher's Lab (if they generate and maintain a collection of physical research specimens)

Factors influencing how inclusively an "organization" is defined in MorphoSource:

1. How autonomously or cooperatively collections from different divisions of a museum are managed.
   1. If all the different collection divisions are managed cooperatively, possibly by a centralized staff, this would indicate the museum could be represented as a single organization inclusive of all its divisions/departments.  
   2. If each collection division has its own staff that operates fairly autonomously, this would indicate each collection division should be represented as its own organization.  This tends to be true even if there is a central IT or informatics group overseeing all collections.
2. How different the scanning and data reuse policies are between different collections of a museum.
   1. If the different collection divisions have a unified policy for scanning and data reuse, the museum could potentially be represented by a single organization. However, it could still be appropriate to have divisional organizations if (for instance) different staff were responsible for overseeing the unified policy implementation in different divisions.
   2. If the different collection divisions have different scanning and data reuse policies, this usually indicates that different collection divisions should be different organizations in MorphoSource. This would be true even if the divisions share a central management team.
3. Whether the museum submits separate reports for each collection/division to data aggregators or a single report for all collections.
   1. If the museum submits a single report (recordset) via IPT for ingest to GBIF, ALA, iDigBio, or other repositories, this can indicate that a single organization is necessary for the museum in MorphoSource.
   2. If the museum submits separate reports for each division or different groups of divisions (eg., paleo v. life sciences) this would indicate that multiple organizations should be used.
4. What the museum's preference is for representation on MorphoSource.
   1. We are interested in listening to the needs of each museum and trying to represent their collections in ways that best support their needs.

What about matching GRSciColl? 

GRSciColl is a registry of Biodiversity collections that is increasingly used.  When possible we will begin linking our organizational records to these registered organizations.  However, in many cases, museums do not define their organization in GRSciColl with a mind towards emulating their collection management structure. Furthermore, GRSciColl is not exhaustively populated.  For these reasons we need to consider the factors listed above when defining organizations and cannot simply regularize according to GRSciColl.

What if my museum is overwhelmed by having to have multiple organizations?

It is understandable that a museum would like a single entry point to explore their records.  However, merging multiple divisional organizations into a single organization is often not feasible or advisable given considerations 1-3 above.  There are some current and coming features that can ease this concern of having too many collections.

1. Any staff that oversee all collection divisions in some sense should be added as a manager to all Organizational Management Teams representing the museum's divisions.  Once that is done, such individuals will be able to see and search/sort through media and specimens from all collections simultaneously on the Media and Objects page of their dashboard.
2. In the next 6 months, MorphoSource will be adding the option of to include a "parent organization" container that all divisional organizations are linked to.