2022 Little Easy Bean Network - We Are Beans Without Borders

[Blue-Jay]

@Bluejay77 Would you like a list off all the beans Robert Lobitz listed in 1998, or just his varieties? Also, I can give you my yearbooks, that I have which you are missing, if you'd like them.

Jack I am just looking for Robert's orignal named beans and not just any bean that he may have listed. I have a list of beans that were in his collection that I obtained from from Ron Thuma in 2015 that he had obtianed in 2008 from Robert's brother James in Pa;ynesville, Minnesota. I don't even know how complete this list of Lobitz original bean names might be. I don't know if it was made by Robet himself or James that went through Robert's data.

Now about the older issues of Yearbooks you have. Aren't they still valuable to you. I would take them if you are willing to part with them. Who knows what action it might precipitate in me. I found and collected some Lobitz beans by making contacts of people from old yearbook listings in 2018. Some of these listings were 5 or six years in the past at the time of these contacts.

I would be willing to pay you the postage for shipping those yearbooks and what ever materials you need to do the mailing. I do not a have any of the 1990's year books. Do not have 2000 to 2007 or 2009 to 2011. Everything else I have.

 

[flowerbug]

This is an interesting topic of consideration too. Seed Savers Exchange employs a full time seed historian working on trying to discovver the orignal source of varieties in the SSE collections. How does this broken chain of custody impact this historians work? What data does this person have to work with.

it's a sad happening and unfortunately when you have a long running organisation things do get destroyed accidentally or intentionally and can take a lot of time and funds to be restored.

having the experience in IT as i do i can say that conversions of databases can sometimes not go well.

and then my own less than stellar early days of some records and pictures that i've lost due to changing equipment, device failures and not keeping backups in all cases or not really caring enough. i didn't see it as important back then and it wasn't until i lost the pictures that i changed my ways to keep things on at least three different physical devices (and multiple copies).

 

[Blue-Jay]

Edited do add : I'm just scanning through the bean listing looking for ones Mr. Lobitz listed, and found Kenearly that he got from USDA, stating it was from Hungary, but below that is Kenearly Yellow Eye, which some one listed, having gotten their seed from Mr. Lobitz in 1993. So maybe we should try to find the 1993 yearbook and see if Mr. Lobitz listed that year. And maybe this is an example of someone changing the name (or adding to it) from what Mr. Lobitz listed.

Yes altering a beans name happens. Sometimes by just adding a word to the name. I had obtained a bean from The New Zealand Bean project I think around 2011 called "Holy". The descrip;tion of the bean was that it was a climbing bean. Often people in other countries have never used the term Pole bean like we do here. Anyway there was a member of Seed Savers Exchange also listed this same bean and gave that same source that I did. They had the beans name listed and "Holy Climbing". It does happen so casually without the thought of the beans original name as was collected. In the case of "Kenearly" I think this was actually the name upon release by the original breeders of the bean. If you ever donate vareities to the USDA Wow ! do they ever make typos and alterations of variety names.

 

[flowerbug]

The sad thing is that at one point, nearly all source data was deleted from SSE listings... not just SSE's listings, everybody. All of mine that was in the 'source' field vanished. Until that was fixed (it appears to work now) I added source info to my descriptions (since re-entered in 'Source'). The deletion appeared to key onto the word "from". As I am going through these older yearbooks, the difference is glaring - a majority of the listings give their source.

This was further disrupted by SSE's decision to abandon the previous inventory codes (BEAN___, PEPPER___, etc.) and switch to Accession #'s - with no cross reference. So for many varieties, the chain of custody has now been irrevocably broken. With as much emphasis as SSE places on history - to the point that is guides their accessions policy - it is really strange that there has apparently been no effort to fix this. The ability to trace varieties is necessary to locate where a corrupted name entered the community (I've watched some of mine get corrupted) and to trace where crosses entered the system, so they can be eliminated.

cataloging is a huge issue in libraries. in older times when records were kept manually it was frequently happening that a library would only get partially catalogued before a new administration would come along and then again it would all partially get done so that the real knowlege of the collection was in the heads of the long time librarians that knew where things were at. when those long-time librarians passed on then it was a way that items got lost until someone went through and found them again and reindexed.

with electronic sources it can be both easier and more destructive (if proper backups are not kept).

it takes a lot of patience to go back and reconstruct a pile of data from old files, especially if you don't have any kind of version control and tracking software or notes which describe what each file is and where it came from.

 

[meadow]

I wonder about the Lobitz legacy beans that I'm working on from Lobitz marterial that was obtained 2 years after Robert's death.... What would be the consensus of everyone here that reads and contributes to this Little Easy Bean Network thread?

I agree with @flowerbug:
"i think if you have done the work to stabilize the bean then it is ok to give it a name yourself and to be associated with that bean. but also in your history and information on your website or in other places if you give credit to the source or sources so that people have a way to trace it back further."

I notice that Carol Deppe took Gaucho and 'cleaned it up.' She then named the resulting bean "Golden Gaucho" but did not list it as one of her original beans. Instead, she lists it along with the story of how it came to be. That being said, her "Golden Gaucho" is being sold by others as just plain "Gaucho." So... I got nuthin.

 

[Jack Holloway]

Now about the older issues of Yearbooks you have. Aren't they still valuable to you. I would take them if you are willing to part with them. Who knows what action it might precipitate in me. I found and collected some Lobitz beans by making contacts of people from old yearbook listings in 2018. Some of these listings were 5 or six years in the past at the time of these contacts.

I would be willing to pay you the postage for shipping those yearbooks and what ever materials you need to do the mailing. I do not a have any of the 1990's year books. Do not have 2000 to 2007 or 2009 to 2011. Everything else I have.

I will see which of those I have and get them mail off to you. I think it will have to be after Xmas.

 

[Jack Holloway]

cataloging is a huge issue in libraries. in older times when records were kept manually it was frequently happening that a library would only get partially catalogued before a new administration would come along and then again it would all partially get done so that the real knowlege of the collection was in the heads of the long time librarians that knew where things were at. when those long-time librarians passed on then it was a way that items got lost until someone went through and found them again and reindexed.

So true. I worked in IT (but so specialized I wouldn't call myself an IT guy!) and the business rules were known by the IT people as we were the ones that programmed the systems to follow them. Business people came and went, but IT was fairly stable. I don't know how many times I had to say, no you can't do that. It is against the law, or you have to have buy off from the state AG to do that, no, the counties require that and will charge you a huge fine should you change it, etc. I retired as they were replacing the system with an off the shelf solution that cost about 10 times to run, compared to what we had, and did less.

 

[Zeedman]

i think if you have done the work to stablize the bean then it is ok to give it a name yourself and to be associated with that bean. but also in your history and information on your website or in other places if you give credit to the source or sources so that people have a way to trace it back further.

I concur with that suggestion. If you have done the work to stabilize something, then having produced the end product, you are within your rights to name it. But at the same time, it is only fair to acknowledge the contributions made by others.

Technically, the pumpkin breeding project that we are working on here will be a similar situation. It will be a unique line, so should not be listed under the same name. What some in SSE have done is to add a name at the end as a "strain", which seems like a good way to differentiate their line from the original, while acknowledging its lineage. So maybe "Little Greenseed, TEG strain".

 

[Jack Holloway]

Technically, the pumpkin breeding project that we are working on here will be a similar situation. It will be a unique line, so should not be listed under the same name. What some in SSE have done is to add a name at the end as a "strain", which seems like a good way to differentiate their line from the original, while acknowledging its lineage. So maybe "Little Greenseed, TEG strain".

Good idea, but I worry that someone will drop off the TEG strain part, and there you go, maybe call it Zeedman's Greenseed.

 

[Zeedman]

cataloging is a huge issue in libraries. in older times when records were kept manually it was frequently happening that a library would only get partially catalogued before a new administration would come along and then again it would all partially get done so that the real knowlege of the collection was in the heads of the long time librarians that knew where things were at. when those long-time librarians passed on then it was a way that items got lost until someone went through and found them again and reindexed.

with electronic sources it can be both easier and more destructive (if proper backups are not kept).

it takes a lot of patience to go back and reconstruct a pile of data from old files, especially if you don't have any kind of version control and tracking software or notes which describe what each file is and where it came from.

The problems in SSE seem to stem from a combination of decisions by upper management (the Board), database software changes, and a very high staff turnover. Even those who try to improve things seldom stay on long enough to see their visions through to completion. That has been a source of constant frustration for me, because I try to build a positive working relationship with someone on staff, only to see them leave after a year or two. I hope the seed historian stays on; given that variety history is part of SSE's core mission, that so much history has been lost, and that so many long-time members have left (or will soon), there is much that needs to be done.

The break between the old naming system & the new accession# system really needs to be addressed. As someone who has acquired & maintained many of SSE's own offerings, the broken link between old & new not only is a broken chain of custody, it allows the same variety - from the same source - to be double listed.