I was interested to hear of New York Botanical Gardens development of a
collections management database in a message from  Eric Siegel :
 
>          As a first step, we are extensively modifying a program
>          created for the Harvard University Herbarium, called HUHpc.
>          Our modification is being done by the developer who created
>          HUHpc, with massive staff involvement. This is a Revelation
>          application, and any of you who have worked with databases
>          probably have real strong feelings about Revelation, either
>          pro or con (mostly the latter it seems.) This process of
>          modification has taken about 2 years, and we are just now
>          getting NYpc (as it is imaginatively called) on to a test
>          data load.
 
I am involved in using and developing two Advanced Revelation databases in
connection with Marine Conservation Society, the Ulster Museum (Belfast) and
the Joint Nature Conservation Committee in England. I would be interested in
hearing from other users of AREV in relation to future plans for their
applications. JNCC are looking into client/server solutions, but there is
also a need for portable PC based solutions.
 
As I understand it AREV is unique among PC databases in storing all data
compactly by using field separators rather than any fixed length fields.
This gives good flexibility for biological records where record length may
vary considerably.
 
I realise that this may be more appropriate for discussion on muse-l (museum
software) but I got a message saying this list was closed when I tried to
subscribe. Please reply directly to me if your message is not appropriate
for all subscribers.
 
 
    Bernard E. Picton,
    Environmental Sciences Unit,
    Trinity College,
    Dublin 2,
    IRELAND.
    Phone: Int + 353-1-608-2055   Irish: 01 608-2055
    Fax:   Int + 353-1-6718047   Irish: 01 6718047
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