Managing Documents

The Documents form allows supporting documents to be attached to a specimen.

Unlike photographs, which primarily record the appearance of a specimen, documents preserve supporting information such as invoices, certificates, field notes, research papers and correspondence.

Each uploaded document becomes part of the specimen's permanent record and can be used to support provenance, identification and future research.

Existing Documents

The panel at the top of the page lists all documents currently associated with the specimen in a table.

If no documents have yet been uploaded, the page will display:

No documents recorded.

As documents are added, this section shows the stored file name, title and document type, with controls to edit or delete each document.

Uploading a Document

Select Upload document and choose the document to be attached to the specimen.

Individual files may be up to 200 MB in size.

Once uploaded, complete the accompanying metadata before selecting Add document.

To edit an existing document, select Edit beside the document row. The form will be populated with the existing metadata and the upload control will be hidden. Saving the form updates the document details without replacing the file.

Field Reference

Field	Purpose
Upload document	Selects and uploads a document file from your computer.
Document type	Records the type or category of document from the controlled list.
Title	A short descriptive title used when displaying the document within the collection.
Document notes	Optional notes describing the document, its contents or its significance to the specimen.
Add document	Saves the uploaded document and its metadata, associating it with the current specimen.
Save document details	Updates the metadata for an existing document.
Delete	Removes the document record and deletes the uploaded file from the managed documents folder.

Best Practices

• Give documents clear, descriptive titles.
• Use the notes field to explain why a document is important.
• Preserve original invoices and certificates where possible.
• Attach copies of scientific papers that directly support an identification, where copyright permits.
• Keep documents even if information from them has been entered elsewhere in the database—the original source is often valuable.
• Where multiple documents relate to the same specimen, upload each separately rather than combining unrelated material into a single file.

Why Record Documents?

Documents provide the evidence behind the specimen record.

While structured fields record facts such as provenance, taxonomy and measurements, supporting documents preserve the original sources from which those facts were derived. Keeping these alongside the specimen helps maintain a transparent and well-documented collection that can be reviewed and reinterpreted as new information becomes available.