What is a GUID?

You may notice at the bottom of some forms, there will be a read-only field that has a value that looks like this d277525a-7a1e-4b3e-9f65-e48b668317f3. This is a GUID, or Globally Unique IDentifier. They are also sometimes called a UUID, or Universally Unique IDentifier. Both of those terms are pretty much equivalent, and so what you call them isn't super important, but understanding what they are and what purpose they serve is.

What role do GUIDs play in Specify?

The purpose of a GUID is to uniquely identify something from everything else of its kind in the world. For a Collection Object, this means that the GUID assigned to it shouldn't be the same GUID as any other occurrence record in the world (and GBIF currently has over 3 billion!).

To achieve this level of uniqueness, the GUIDs generated by Specify are long and completely random. You won't need to worry about them for most day to day things. However, if you ever want to find a record in another system, the GUID can be a super easy way to get right to it.

GUIDs also play a key role in maintaining continuity between systems. When the museum migrated from one database system to the next, all records kept the same GUID, making sure that outside data aggregators knew that they were the same set of records as before, and could link them up accordingly.

How can GUIDs be used in Specify?

GUIDs can be queried for just like any other field in Specify! They can be useful if you are trying to find a record in Specify that is referenced in another system.