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Defining an Organization

Defining an Organization

We intentionally use the term “organization” because, as a term, it crosses hierarchical scales and allows for flexibility in the way that terms such as collection, division, institution, department, laboratory, or facility do not. In fact, an organization can be any of those things. We loosely define an organization as a semi-autonomous bureaucratic unit that is directly responsible for managing physical objects, including specimens, and/or imaging devices. Different institutions, facilities, or museums may divide their departments or collections differently across organization records in ways that reflect their preferences and how internal sub-units are managed. We can help organization staff determine how best to translate the structure of their institution or group to one or more MorphoSource organizations.

 

A single organization record on MorphoSource could represent:

  1. A single museum or university, inclusive of all of its collection divisions.

  2. A single collection division at a museum or university, with others divisions within the same museum or university represented by additional organizations.

  3. An imaging or scanning facility.

  4. A researcher or faculty member’s laboratory or scholarly collection, if they generate and maintain a collection of physical objects for research or education.

 

Factors influencing how a single organization is defined:

  1. How autonomously or cooperatively collections from different divisions of a museum are managed.

    1. If 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 or 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 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 example, different staff were responsible for overseeing the unified policy implementation in different divisions.

    2. If different collection divisions have different scanning and data reuse policies, this usually indicates that different collection divisions should be different organizations on 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 vs. 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 the idea of 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 can be added as a manager member to all organizations representing the museum's divisions.  Once that is done, these individuals will be able to view media and specimens from all collections simultaneously on the Media and Objects page of the MorphoSource dashboard.

  2. In the future, MorphoSource will add the option to include a parent organization container that all divisional organizations are linked to.