there is one big problem with a
> database: that is that for it to be of any use it needs to be maintained,
> and somebody (you) has to sit there and do it. Now you have already got a
> 40 hour+ a week job, a family and other commitments, so any spare time you
> have you'd rather spend playing with your shells. Sounds familiar?

I have a database for my Conus collection. It is a brown, cloth-bound B5
binder with 20-hole pages which can be inserted and removed. Each page
represents a species, in alphabetical order. A page begins with nothing but
the species name at the top. As and when I have a moment in my hectic
schedule (nothing too productive, you understand, but darlings - one has a
social life too) I add whatever snippet of data I have gleaned that
day/week/decade. For example, the other day I got some dredged dead cones
from the Balabac strait, among which were three dusavelis in various states
of growth. Despite being dead'uns the three very nicely demonstrated the
significant weight gain in the adult stage which characterises the
bullatus/dusaveli/cervus group. Off the shelf with the binder, new page for
'dusaveli' and note the size, number of whorls and weight of the three
specimens. Bit by bit I will go on to add the author and date, the
reference for the original description, references to plates as I notice
them in various books and papers and so on; little sketches will appear,
xeroxed plates will be stuck in here and there along with my own
photographs and by the time I'm old and grey, this binder will be a
half-useful guide to the Cones - maybe even suitable for publication. By
that time, optical character recognition software will mean each page can
be scanned into a database without touching it (this is more or less
possible already, though not 100% successful with my handwriting). Ten
minutes here and there all adds up. If I had to switch on a computer, wait
for it to warm up and then muck about with Excel or some other database
program each time I felt the urge to make a note, I wouldn't have half as
many data-logging sessions per week as I do now.

Charles Davies Sherborn was an odd sort of fellow; he loved, like few
others before or since, the process of cataloguing. One day he sat down,
shot his cuffs and listed every new name in zoology published between 1758
and 1800 - including of course the mollusca, fossil and Recent. This done,
he sipped his tea, drummed his fingers a bit then set about the same task
for all the new names from 1800 to 1850. These two colossal lists - every
new name in all zoology with its full reference down to page number and
notes concerning validity - were published under the title Index Animalium.
History is a kind judge but it takes its time in apportioning glory.
Published between 1922 and 1933, this staggering tour de force was being
sold off for scrap paper as recently as 1970, and even now a full set of
the 1800-50 work will not cost you more than a few hundred dollars. Any
zoological library worth the name will have both.
Florence Ruhoff, another mad indexer, spotted where Charlie had slipped up
- yes, the lazy slacker had left a gap between 1850 and 1870 when the
Zoological Record started. Florrie had a few days to spare, so she listed
every new name in the mollusca (though not genus or fossil names, unlike
Sherborn) for those twenty years, providing us with the final link in a
record from Linnaeus to the present day. The Smithsonian Institution
published her list, and copies are easily available.
So it is, folks, that the original reference for any mollusc ever published
can be yours in an instant, or at least in return for a letter to a decent
library. Armed with the reference you can then ask for a xerox of the
article or original figure from any library which has the original work. If
it's a public institution - and all national museums are - they cannot
refuse, not that they ever try. Most librarians are so happy to have a
specific request - 'Please send me a xerox of G. B. Sowerby : 'More of Mr.
Cuming's damn shells' Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London part
22 for 1866, pages 21-26' versus 'Can you send me Richfield's original
figure of the species now known as Xenotriton curriana; maybe published
before 1900' - that they come up with the goods toot sweet. Do the basic
legwork yourself in the manner described above, and pretty soon you will be
able to label your specimen :

Xenotriton curriana (Sowerby II, 1866) : Triton curriana 'Richfield MS' :
PZSL 22 (1866) : 23, pl. 2, fig. 1. Identified from type figure. Type
species of Xenotriton Airedale, 1933 : Zoological Journal vol. 21 : 160.

Now there's a proper label.