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]