Keeping the catalog
Updated
The catalog is the collection. The specimens are its physical index.
What the catalog is for
Reuniting a specimen with its data when the label is lost.
Insurance, which needs a list with values.
Sale, because a documented collection sells as a collection and an undocumented one sells as material.
And your own memory, which is worse than you think at five hundred specimens.
The fields
Catalog number. Species and associated species. Locality at each level. Collector or source. Date collected and date acquired. Size and weight. Price paid. Current location in your storage. Condition notes. Identification basis. Treatments or repairs. Provenance chain. Photograph reference.
Hazard flag, for anything asbestiform, radioactive or arsenic-bearing, so nobody handling the collection later is surprised.
Form
A spreadsheet is enough and better than most dedicated software, because it will still open in twenty years.
One row per specimen, one column per field, no merged cells, no formatting carrying meaning.
Export it to a plain format annually and keep a copy somewhere other than the room the collection is in. A fire that takes the collection should not also take the record of what was in it.
The habit that keeps it alive
Catalog on arrival, before the specimen goes on a shelf. A box of uncatalogd material becomes a drawer, and a drawer becomes the backlog that never gets done.
The rule that works: nothing gets shelved until it has a number, and nothing gets a number without a row.