I agree in general principle with Susan Harless that there is a great deal of information in museums and archives and libraries and with the explosion of information access technology, these should be accessible. However, the managerial trend of "downsizing" or "rightsizing" (a cover-your-a* * ephemism) has affected museums, archives, and libraries as well. I can tick off literally dozens of information collections or resources that either should be indexed or typed in to the computer so the electronic information is availa- ble....but I have no staff to do this. Indeed many of our users chide us for spending too much time in front of the computer; other users are outraged to discover (after they've printed their family history book) that we did indeed have additional important information....which simply was unlocatable at the time of their visit. One time saver that we have used in compiling electronic databases has been the inclusion of in-house abbreviations to make entry easier....but sharing these with the users have been frustrating because an entry like: 1994.43.3 A W Carv attrb J Smith Pres:y Stor:131B S:15x14i makes sense to us, but for a user would need to be retranslated as: Accession 1994 Collection 43 Item 3 Artifact. Wood Carving attributed to John Smith. The "y" in Pres means it has undergone preservation treatment and a report is on file in the Preservation File. It is stored at location 131B and is 15 inches high and 14 inches wide. Note: this is a made up example, but I cite it to show one of the difficulties in moving internal databases to public use, if there IS an internal database. One of our collections at present consists of 30 feet of 3x5 slips, a massive index to another group of materials (100,000 documents at least). We have no way to translate these to electronic medium (though I've thought of scanning) ....It would be great to have these as an electronic database and available but given budget austerities and staff reductions, I don't see it happening. Dean DeBolt, University Librarian Special Collections and West Florida Archives University of West Florida