Labels that stay with the specimen
Updated
Everywhere else in the estate a label has to adhere and look good. Here it has to survive an atmosphere that some specimens actively make corrosive, and it has to stay associated with a stone that will be picked up and put down for a century.
The requirement is unusual
The specimen outlives the label, the box and probably the collector.
And a decaying pyrite specimen produces sulfuric acid that attacks paper. The label is frequently the first casualty of a problem that started in the stone.
Inside the box
A loose printed label on acid-free stock is the standard, and loose is deliberate: no adhesive to age, and it can be lifted out and read.
Positioned so it can be read without moving the specimen, which removes the commonest cause of breakage.
For anything reactive, keep the paper from touching the specimen, and photograph it now.
On the box
A second label on the outside, so a drawer can be read without opening anything.
Here an adhesive label is reasonable, because the box is expendable and the specimen is not.
Ask for a stock rated for the plastic. Polypropylene and polyethylene are low-energy surfaces and general-purpose paper labels lift off them.
At minimum the outside carries the catalog number, the species and the locality, which is what makes a drawer searchable.
Never on the specimen
An adhesive label on stone will fail, and when it does it takes a flake of the surface with it.
Adhesive residue on a porous specimen is a conservation job.
The specimen carries its catalog number instead, written in ink on a reversible barrier patch in an unobtrusive place. That is the museum convention and it is the only marking that belongs directly on a specimen.