GBIF vs. PBot specimen numbers

[ecurrano]

I was playing around with the new GBIF integration and tried to do our integrated search for the Bighorn Basin specimen that was on the cover of Science. However, GBIF has the specimen number as "USNM PAL606436", whereas we have been using "USNM PAL 606436". Thoughts on what to do about this? The Smithsonian catalog does include the space, and I've checked with Scott about this being more correct, so it is a GBIF problem that I'm not sure we want to propagate. I'm not sure how much work it would be for Doug to remake this as a fuzzy search without spaces, but it would be confusing to do the search and keep getting no results when you know the specimen is in there. I suspect this same problem might exist also for other repositories.

[doricon]

I noted this in the original issue as well. Nice to know that the space should be there and we don't need to adjust anything in Pbot for the USNM numbers! I'm guessing that must be something in their upload path to GBif. Interestingly there are a few records in gbif that have the space.

Regardless it is likely that this won't be an isolated issue to usnm, especially the space vs no space or even whether to include the "pal" part (many institutions do this, but not everyone remembers to include it in pubs or datasheets!). I love a good fuzzy search, that would indeed be the most ideal option.

But if that isn't immediately implement-able, then I think we will just have to give instructions in the how-to documents for when you don't get an initial match in gbif (which means the specimen is either not in there, or it is but the specimen number does not match the gbif catalogue number. In that case folks will either need to figure out whether they have their specimen number entered correctly, and if not, then they can edit the specimen number to match. But if gbif has it incorrectly, then just copy/paste the gbif id into the field.

Honestly the fuzzy search will be more helpful for also discovering when there are discrepancies between the specimen number in different databases.