Duplicate Catalog Numbers

This page describes how to identify and merge (when necessary) specimens with duplicate catalog numbers or other catalog numbers.

This tool can be found in the Administration Control Panel (My Profile > Occurrence Management > name of collection).

To use the tool, first select whether you would like to list duplicates based on Catalog Numbers or Other Catalog Numbers from the “List Duplicates based on…” box. If duplicates exist, a table of duplicate records will appear on the resulting page.

Duplicate Cleaning Tool

From here, you can evaluate whether the duplicate records should be edited, merged, or ignored. To view and/or edit a record, click the number in the ID column next to the record you wish to view. This will open that specimen’s Record Editor page.

If you decide that the two records should be merged, check the boxes next to both duplicates, then select the radio button that corresponds to the record you wish to make the primary record. If both records have a value in a given field, Symbiota will keep the value that belongs to this primary record and discard the other value. When you are satisfied that the correct information will be retained, click the Merge Duplicate Records button.

If there are many duplicate records to evaluate, you can click the checkbox at the top of the checkbox column. This will check all of the boxes in the entire table. You can also select the radio button column header, which will allow Symbiota to auto-select a record to retain for each pair. You will want to vet this list to ensure that the correct record is selected for retention.

Cite this page:

Katie Pearson. Duplicate Catalog Numbers. In: Symbiota Support Hub (2021). Symbiota Documentation. https://biokic.github.io/symbiota-docs/coll_manager/data_cleaning/dupes/. Created on 12 Oct 2021.