Anne:

   Depending on your on-line catalog software, there should be a way to
   block out fields that might contain confidential information from
   remote users, or other categories of users. That would argue for a
   button on your web site which brings you, through telnet, to your
   catalog. On the other hand, extracting data from your on line catalog
   in a form that is searchable from the web site should be no problem,
   except for updating. If your web site is being "out-sourced" and
   maintained on someone elses server, that would certainly be a serious
   "firewall" to prevent access to your data.

   In the Garden's case, as far as I understand it, the library catalog
   is maintained on a separate server which can be accessed through
   telnet. Our own web site is still not implemented, so I'm not sure
   how the connection to the catalog will finally be established.
   I haven't heard of any serious security concerns, either about data
   integrity, confidential collections information, or hacking through
   the public pages to system level access.  If you want more technical
   information, please send me, off list, the technical details of your
   two proposed set ups and I can forward that to the Garden's technical
   people.

   Eric Siegel
   Director of Corporate and
   Science Development
   The New York Botanical Garden
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