Nat Hist Museum Web Page design and functionality

[Ken Walker]

James,

The internet has changed the way many of us conduct our daily work
and it would seem that Museum collection management / development
must take advantage of this new means of communication. The failure of
collections to present an online vision will continue to hide the value
of these collections and to keep the development of collections
in the increasingly precarious circumstances they now face.

Museum specimen databases store our Biological Legacy and as such are equally
important for scientific and public access. An effective web interface into
these collections should take into account their educational as well as
scientific value and provide a port for both types of query access.

An important caveat to providing access is that the data set made available
is worth querying.  That is, it has reached a "critical mass" both in terms
of quantity as well as quality to be able to provide useful and accurate
information. Researchers and collection managers must be the arbiters in
making these decisions.

Finally, query access should be directed at the "live database", not a
copy of the data.  Copied data will not allow immediate access to
relevant additions and edits to the data.  This has the advantage of drawing
the user back to the web interface to ensure they have the most up to date
information available and makes best use of a web interface into the
collections.

With these aspects in mind, web interface query modules could include
some of the following:

NOMENCLATURE
- Where appropriate, common name searches for scientific names and
  scientific name searches for multiple common names.
- Classification of an organism from Kingdom to species or subspecies.
- Hierarchical searches to display the "relatives" beneath a chosen
  taxon (eg family or genus)
- Query on a specific common or scientific name and return an array of
  the specimens databased for the query term.

MAPPING
- Create a distribution map for a selected taxon.
The user should be able to modify the query to allow distribution
maps for say only specific months of the year. When the distribution map is
produced, the user should be able to overlay this map with other maps (eg
rainfall, vegetation, altitude, zoogeographic regions) that may help
explain the observed species distribution points.

STATISTICS
- Produce a table or graph displaying the cumulative collection frequencies
of a taxon across a each monty of the year.
- Time and Space Queries.  This is an extremely useful query mode and only
data collected from large collections can provide useful answers. Unlike the
above monthly activity searches, here the user can choose to examine
the presence of a taxon in particular months of the year in particular
locations.
- Using data gathered over an extended period of time (eg 100 years), the user
can examine the patterns of migratory species, or recent arrivals or when
combined with a locality query can examine the occurence of local extinctions.

BIODIVERSITY SEARCHES
- An area, such as a state or city, can be divided into equal size units
(eg. for a State it may be 30 minute squares, while for a city it may be
10 minute squares).  The users can choose one or more of these squares and
request a cumulative species checklist for the squares chosen.  Alternatively,
the user may choose the same sequence of units but this time request a
comparative species data matrix showing which taxa occur in which square.

ECOLOGICAL SEARCHES
- Host associations combined with the ability to map the resultant
  answers.
- Symbiotic relationships combined with the ability to map the resultant
  answers.
- Pollination indices for say either: What bees visit this plant? or What
  plants do we know this bee visits? again combined with the ability to
  map the resultant answers.
- Venom or skin secretion toxicities.

IMAGE, VIDEO AND SOUND SEARCHES
- The user should be able to choose the type of image for the taxon in
  which they are interested.  Similarly, sound and video files could
  also be made available for access.

TYPE CATALOGUES AND SCIENTIFIC REPRINT SEARHCES
- These query types could be designed for mainly scientific use and as such
would not require the same user friendly attributes of a public query
module.

Obviously, to effect some of the above query modules, some data enhancement
is required.  However, if goals are set for the effectiveness of a web
interface, then the enhancements are worth the effort.

Museum Victoria has attempted to create a web interface into our
Victorian Butterfly, Snake, Frog and Halictid Bee data sets (approx.
100,000 specimen records) that faciliates most of the above query
modules.  It is still in the development stage, in particular images
for the snakes and images and calls for the frogs, but will show some
of the ways we are trying to create an online vision for these parts
of the collections,

The URL is:

http://pioneer.mov.vic.gov.au/chaec/butter/home.html


and it is best viewed with either IE4 or Netscape 4 / Communicator.


To monitor usage, a free user registration module will probably be
implemented.


Hope this is of some help.

Ken

______________________________________________________________________________

Dr Ken Walker                           kwalker at mov.vic.gov.au
Museum Victoria
Conservation and Environment
71 Victoria Crescent                    telephone 61-3 9284 0201
Abbotsford  Victoria                    fax       61-3 9416 0475
Australia  3067
______________________________________________________________________________