[NHCOLL-L:2593] Re: Herbarium database

[Larry A Prather]

Hi Raney: 

I'm not sure if you can get a complete picture of what is most commonly used 
from this website, but there is a listing of what programs over 70 herbaria 
are using, along with contact information and links to those that are online 
at this url: http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/botany/ncsc/type_links.htm 

My suggestion would be to have your colleague check out that website and 
contact people who are actually using these programs to learn the advantages 
and disadvantages. It would also be a good idea to find out what other 
regional herbaria are using (noting of course your "region" in Alaska will 
be substantially larger than most). I know that the Museum at U of A 
Fairbanks has much of their collection databased even though they are not on 
the list, so contacting them directly would be a good idea. I think Alan 
Batten <fnarb at aurora.uaf.edu> might be able to help. 

I know that Ke Emu is a good program but it is mighty expensive and many of 
us are leary of putting our valuable data in a "black box" software system 
from which it might be difficult to extract the data if and when Ke goes 
belly up. There are many other good programs that are free and that don't 
have this problem that you should definitely consider. Here at MSU we have a 
database of over 100,000 specimens in Specify and we're very pleased with 
the results (going online in the next couple of weeks, we hope!). If you 
want to know more about our experiences with Specify please contact me 
offlist. 

Best,
Alan 

 

Alan Prather
Michigan State University Herbarium
Department of Plant Biology