releasing rare sp. localities

[Alan Harvey]

Greetings!

As someone who is right now designing the database for our department's
collections (i.e., re-inventing the wheel?), I've found this thread most
interesting. The problem should not be a difficult one, in a technical
sense at least, for computerized catalogs (and both those qualifiers are
important!). You can have a high-resolution field and a low-resolution
field for specific locality data, and the reports generated can insert
whichever field is deemed appropriate for a given user. I'm not talking
about web-based catalogs here, but rather the one use by the institution
itself. I'd suggest that if there's any sensitivity about this issue, the
corresponding web-based catalog should only provide the low-res data, and
folks who need the greater resolution should get in touch with a real
person at the institution. This should provide both reasonable access for
varied users and reasonable controls for the institutional folks
responsible for the data.

Cheers,

Alan

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Alan W. Harvey (aharvey at amnh.org)
Assistant Curator of Invertebrates
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024
(212) 769-5638; fax (212) 769-5783
http://research.amnh.org/~aharvey