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A collaborative system for sharing paleontology collections data

¹ Department of Invertebrate Paleontology, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90007, USA

Museum collections provide primary data for paleontologists, and recent advances in information technology have revolutionized how museums collect and share this information. However, many natural history museums have huge collections and small budgets, so museum scientists are challenged to keep these critical data current and available to the public. We suggest that establishing an open collaboration through the Internet is one possible solution to this challenge. To achieve this solution, we have implemented a Web-based collections catalog to encourage collaborative maintenance of collections data as a shared resource. Anyone can search the catalog via a simple interface designed for any standard Web browser, and Web users can also be authorized to add information or update records as stratigraphic and taxonomic concepts change. The goal is to establish two-way communication between our catalog and the scientific community wherein the museum shares its collections and related data, and in return the community contributes new data acquired through use of the collections. The catalog also provides a basic function for building links with online publications and other data sources. As data exchange standards become accepted, these links can be used to create metadatabases that could lead to global networks of collections, taxonomic, stratigraphic, and bibliographic information. By providing an efficient mechanism to locate and synthesize large volumes of disparate information, such loosely integrated systems have resulted in rapid progress in disciplines of the life and physical sciences, and they represent one way forward into a data-rich future for paleontology.

Keywords: geoinformatics • paleontology • collections

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