Hi --- >To obtain really valuable data users must be able to do a real >query of at least a portion of the data and be given a >relational-like environment in which to operate. Queries for >objects should be able to produce attribution data, history of >use data and bibliographical info. > >I believe we have some ways to go still. We do still have a ways to go, but maybe not quite as far as you may think. Although many on-line catalogs are basically flat files, many do have a wealth of information and are formatted in appealing ways. The University of California Museum of Paleontology has some prototype type catalogs (sounds rather redundant, doesn't it?) that do provide publications and has a somewhat appealing layout. Even more spectacular (and by a large margin) are some of the SQL interfaces using Mosaic. A marvelous example is on-line at Australian National University (url=http://rubens.anu.edu/prints_form.html). It is a query mechanism for an image database. Cheers, Robert Guralnick | Museum of Paleontology | University of California Berkeley, CA 94720 | [log in to unmask] | (510) 642-9696