Labeling a find
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What to record
What it is, where it was found with as much precision as you can manage, the date, the land status and whose permission you had. Five fields, at the moment of finding.
Why precision matters
A shell from a named beach on a known date is data. The same shell labeled "Florida" is a decoration. The difference costs nothing at the time and cannot be recovered later.
Land status is the field people skip
And it is the one that answers a question years later about whether a find was lawfully collected. Writing "private, with permission from the owner" at the time is worth a great deal.
Put it on the outside
A paper label inside a sealed jar is paper in a closed atmosphere with the find. For anything metal in the same container that is a sulfur source, and for everything it is a humidity source.
And keep a second copy
A notebook, a spreadsheet or photographs. Labels fall off, fade and get rewritten, and a collection whose entire provenance lives on its containers is one spill away from being anonymous.
Photograph in situ where you can
Especially for archaeological material, where the context is most of the information. A photograph before the object is moved is the single most valuable thing a finder can produce.
Number the containers
A short code on the jar and the detail in the record keeps the label small and the information complete, which also means the container does not have to carry a paragraph.
Clear containers help here
94 of the 298 on this shelf. Being able to identify a find without opening the jar keeps the seal intact and the label honest.