Labels that survive

Museum practice is settled: labels on 100 % cotton rag or other acid-free, lignin-free paper, printed with carbon-pigment ink. Dye-based inkjet ink and most ballpoints are soluble in the very solvents — ethanol, acetone — that preparation and conservation use, and they fade. Laser toner sits on the surface and can flake. Thermal-transfer printing with a resin ribbon is the most durable office method; direct-thermal receipt-style labels fade to nothing in a few years and are for shipping, not collections.

Put the label inside the box or tray with the specimen, not on the box lid; lids get swapped. The full label carries the accession number, the identification, the formation and age, the locality, the collector and the date, plus the source if bought or traded.

Write the accession number on the specimen itself only where it is reversible: a small patch of white acrylic or a Paraloid B-72 barrier coat, the number in pigment ink, sealed with another thin coat of B-72. The whole patch comes off with acetone. Never use correction fluid (it flakes) or permanent marker (it fades and cannot be removed). Some collectors prefer a removable plastic tag so a future owner can renumber.

Keep every historical label that comes with a specimen, however scruffy — a 1920s dealer label is provenance, and a label in a known hand can be the only proof of locality. Photograph it into the vault and store the paper flat in a polyester sleeve with the piece.

Stratum prints three archival sizes — a micro accession label, a drawer label and a tray label — and every one reads from the record, so the label and the database never disagree.