In her post of Sept. 5, Barbara Weitbrecht made several important points
about making collections data available online.  However, as a researcher
who uses various online natural history collection databases, I must
disagree with several of her points.
 
She states several objections that have been raised at the NASM.  The first
thgat shes listed was the following:
 
>1) Other institutions, and individual researchers, could use it as a
>   "shopping list" to request loans and research specimens.  The
>   curatorial and conservation staff would prefer that requests be
>   more generic ("an altimeter" rather than "altimeter 1993-23")
>   so they can select the most appropriate artifact.
>
 
I feel that this is one of the greatest virtues of online collection
databases.  I find it hard to believe that the "curatorial and conservation
staff" would be able to determine consistently which artifact would most
appropriate to a researcher's work, rather than the researcher deciding.
If a researcher requests a specific artifact and the curator thinks that
another might be more appropriate for the research, that curator can
always suggest this to the researcher even with a specific loan request.
 
In addition, it is frequently useful to be able to find out if a
collection contains any (catalogued) material that is relevent to
a particular research project before conatcting the collections staff.
 
The second point:
>
>2) Our collections data (like the collections data of most museums)
>   is so messy and incomplete that it would be a professional
>   embarrassment to have it available online.
>
 
is, of course, well taken and a common problem.  However, maybe
putting parts of the collection online will serve as incentive
to improve data capture and quality.
 
She also suggested that
 
>Well-defined, important collections (such as the type collections
>of natural history museums) are good candidates for online searches.
>So are collections of items (such as art) where every object is
>unique.  Collections such as NASM's, which contain many instances
>of similar objects (hundreds of tires, hundreds of propellors....)
>are less well served by this technique.
>
 
I have to disagree with the assertion that "unique items" (artworks or
type specimens) are better candidates for inclusion in online databases
than are collections of similar objects.  In mammalogy and paleontology
(the two areas with which I deal most frequently) we are getting away
from a "type specimen" approach to questions.  The variation in a
population of organisms is frequently of paramount importance.  Many
times I have been looking for large collections of seemingly similar
objects (i.e. skulls of a particular species of bat).  Knowing that a
collection has 150 Myotis velifer skins and skulls from California
is frequently more important than knowing that the collection contains
the type specimen.
 
I suspect that many non-biological research questions are similar.  I can
see many lines of research in which it would be important to find
what collection has a number of propellors from a certain type of
aircraft, including work on manufacturing techniques, material quality,
types of damage from wear, etc.
 
Rick
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Rickard S. Toomey, III    [log in to unmask]
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Illinois State Museum
phone (217) 524-7908