Introduction

There are many situations under which access to classical voucher specimens is limited or impossible. Relying heavily on electronic communication technologies, e-vouchers help to alleviate this problem. They provide additional information for museum specimens in a readily transmitted format, thereby maximizing access to zoo specimens, endangered species, contaminated specimens, and private holdings, to name a few. They also serve to provide a means of viewing classical voucher specimens without resorting to a physical loan.

 

Definition

An e-voucher is a digital representation of a specimen. An e-voucher may be ancillary to a classical voucher specimen or it may be the only representative of the specimen in the collection. e-Vouchers are made available to researchers through electronic communication technologies.

 

Value of e-Vouchers to Collections

There are many circumstances under which e-vouchers may be profitably created. These fall into the four categories outlined in table 1. Basically, e-vouchers should be required whenever there is reasonable certainty that the concerned specimen will not be deposited in a museum collection. Furthermore, it may be desirable to create e-vouchers for classical voucher specimens in order to emphasize or document specific details or to allow ready access to said specimens.

Table 1.– Examples of specimens that might include e-vouchers.
specimen status	examples
accessioned / available	classical collections skulls
accessioned / unavailable	type specimens contaminated specimens endangered species diseased specimens
non-accessioned / available	zoo animals (living) animal room holdings (living) education collections
non-accessioned / unavailable	private collections zoo animals (non-living, destroyed) endangered species specimens from mark & recapture studies

 

Benefits of e-Voucher Use

The advantages of e-vouchers are evident. They serve to make specimens more widely available to a broader group of users. They also help to protect specimens from excessive handling. A more detailed list of benefits is outlined below.

1. Provide access to collection holdings that would otherwise be difficult or impossible: contaminated and type specimens.
   
2. Documenting non-accessioned specimens: living animals, endangered species (observed but not collected), mark & recapture studies, education collections, private collections.
   
3. Provide a representation of a specimen in a readily transmitted electronic medium.
   
4. Reduce the need for loans of classical specimens by enabling more efficient selection of specimens to be examined.
   
5. Provide a record of a complete specimen in the event that only a portion (or none) of the specimen is collected: road-killed specimens, hunting check station samples.

 

Examples of e-Voucher Use

Many examples of potential uses of e-vouchers could be given. However, only two are presented here. The first was an actual situation in which a conflict arose regarding a two-headed bullsnake (Pituophis melanoleucus). One curator wanted to donate it to the Museum's teaching collection, while another wanted to maintain it as a representative voucher for tissues which previously had been collected. An e-voucher, in the form of three digital images, resolved the issue. See figure 1.

Figure 1. Pituophis melanoleucus e-voucher consisting of three images: the dorsal view, the ventral view, and a view of the head region. This e-voucher allowed the specimen to be deposited in the Museum's non-accessioned teaching collection while the tissues were accessioned into the Vital Tissues collection.

 

A second example of e-voucher use consists of the ability of an institution to e-mail images of specimens to potential borrowers who will, upon examination of the images, determine which, if any, of the specimens need to be borrowed (Fig. 2). This will result in an overall reduction in potentially damaging handling of specimens.

Figure 2. e-Vouchers of four specimens of Oxymycterus rufus. A group of images such as this may be e-mailed to a scientist, allowing examination and selection of specimens to be requested for loan. In this case, the researcher might wish to omit the sub-adult specimen from the loan.

 

Considerations

It is evident that e-vouchers will raise all the issues of specimen use that are encountered in museum collections. Each institution's collections management policy must address these legal and ethical issues. In some situations, access to e-vouchers may be given without restriction (web-based access) while in other situations, access may be as controlled as it is for loans of specimens for destructive analyses.