I am forwarding this message from the Mollusca list.  Please respond
directly to Dr. Atkinson (e-mail address at bottom of message)

Fellow mollusc folks,
        I have been given responsibility for the Michigan State Univ.
Zoology
Department's Invert. collection.  It is a small collection of a wide
variety of organisms gathered by many individuals over many years (one jar
of freshwater sponges is dated 1898!).  There is no catalog.  One member of
the department knows what is there and tells me that there are several lots
of research quality including a collection of freshwater bivalves taken
from the Red Cedar River in the 1950s.  Most of the materials do seem to be
well labeled with collection data, taxonomic information,
etc.  Unfortunately the collection has been moved from room to room at
least 5 times in the last 10 years and any semblance of order appears to
have been lost.
        My hope is to bring order to this chaos by creating a catalog and
organizing the various cabinets into some type of systematic
arrangement.  Since my areas of expertise are snail development and
behavior, this project is a new challenge.  It seems to me that I might as
well create the catalog on the computer using some sort of database.  At
the moment I have a copy of the 1994 Borland Paradox database and a little
bit of knowledge about setting up fields and making queries but I would
like to use something more up-to-date and powerful and perhaps user
friendly.   Are there any taxonomic or systematics database programs
already available that would work?  If not, what suggestions do any of you
have as to what basic (windows based) database would be best to adapt to my
purpose?   I have no love for microsoft (word perfect is better!), but will
use their products if they are the best available.
        I will have to create an accession number system and determine what
information needs to be included about each specimen.  Any suggestions are
welcome.

Thanks,
      Jim


James W. Atkinson
Professor of Zoology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI  48824

[log in to unmask]