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A museum curator said my field notes were 'useless to anyone but me' and I've been rethinking labels ever since
She looked at three seasons of my dig journal and said future researchers would have no idea what half my abbreviations meant. So now I write location, depth, and soil type out in full, even when it slows me down. Is that overkill, or should everyone digging be doing this?
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skylergrant6h ago
How long do you think it takes before those full notes actually save someone time? Because I bet it pays off way faster than people assume. Say a grad student picks up your journal in ten years, they don't have to guess or track you down to ask what "SL-3" meant. They just read it and keep going. And honestly the person it saves first is probably you, since future you will forget half those short forms too.
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