Email digest for the Global Conservation Forum (ConsDistList) egroup. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. A short survey on persistent identifiers for heritage samples ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1.From: Joseph Padfield Posted: Sunday May 24, 2026 2:40 PM Subject: A short survey on persistent identifiers for heritage samples Message: Hello all, I wanted to share a piece of work with this community and to ask for your input via a short survey. Over the past few years a number of us have been working on the Heritage Samples Registry (HSR), an emerging international initiative to make physical samples taken from heritage objects easier to identify, find, and link to the analytical data and reports produced from them. The basic problem is one many of us know well: samples get taken during a treatment, examination, or research project, generate valuable analytical results, and then sit in trays, drawers, or institutional databases where nobody outside the original team can readily discover or reuse them. Even within institutions, the link between a sample and the data about it is often fragile and dependent on memory or on a single spreadsheet. HSR is not trying to be another database. It is set up as a persistent identifier service, issuing IGSNs (a long-established identifier system used widely for geological and environmental samples) for heritage science samples, so that whatever data and records live wherever they live, the sample itself has a stable identifier that everything else can hang off. We are running a short survey to scope current practice, what people actually do today around sample identification, documentation, and sharing, and to gauge interest in registry services as they develop. It takes 10 to 15 minutes and can be completed individually or on behalf of an institution. We would particularly value responses from people working in conservation studios and labs, not only from heritage science as such, because the practical realities of how samples are handled, recorded, and later found again are exactly what we need to understand. Take the survey: https://research.nationalgallery.org.uk/limesurvey/index.php/20260206 Responses are being gathered up to 31 July. The survey is in English with translations available in Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish. HSR is a collaboration between the National Gallery (UK), KIK-IRPA (Belgium), FORTH (Greece), and the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum (Germany), with support from the ECHOES project. Background and contact details are at https://heritagesamples.org, [email protected]. Happy to discuss any of this further in the thread, and if the survey itself is not the right fit, but you know colleagues for whom it would be, please do forward it on. With thanks, Joe Padfield National Gallery, London ------------------------------ Joseph Padfield Principal Scientist The National Gallery London United Kingdom ------------------------------ You are subscribed to "Global Conservation Forum (ConsDistList)" as [email protected]. To change your subscriptions, go to http://community.culturalheritage.org/preferences?section=Subscriptions. To unsubscribe from this community discussion, go to https://community.culturalheritage.org/HigherLogic/eGroups/Unsubscribe.aspx?UserKey=d16eaa87-0f69-494b-9f2f-303dbc1222e1&sKey=fab9aa4f27a04c5d876e&GroupKey=757a8f16-505f-4323-8e74-e376757aa9f7.
