To Janet Fanning: The Smithsonian uses a variety of collection
management systems, including stand-alone catalogs on PCs. The online
system which is up, running, and available on the WWW is called SIRIS,
which uses MARC format and includes the libraries, some archival units
(like mine), some artifact collections, etc. My museum, the National
Museum of American History, is working with Multi-Mimsy for artifact
collections. There's every reason to believe that it will be available
for research eventually. In the meantime, some important collections can
be accessed through SIRIS, including the National Anthropological
Archives in the National Museum of Natural History. You can call me at
202-357-3779 for more information about SIRIS, and to get names of folks
to discuss Multi-Mimsy, plus other leads. As you see, the answer to your
question is somewhat complex.