Collections on Internet

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        The Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley
(UCMP) has its type specimen catalogs, Pacific Rim Biodiversity,  and
special virtual exhibits on its World Wide Web (WWW) and Gopher computer
server for access on the Internet.  With well over 20 million users on the
Internet, certain benefits and problems have arisen.  UCMP computerized its
collections in the mid-1960s, and in 1991 downloaded its files to its
server to make them available to the scientific community.  It's
collections database and, increasingly, images of type specimens (currently
building the foraminiferal type specimen image collection) have been
accessed by large numbers of scientific users, land-use planners,
environmental assessment companies, educational institutions, and the
general public.  Access for the WWW is
http://ucmp1.berkeley.edu:welcome.html for the WWW (Mosaic freeware
required) and for Gopher is gopher.ucmp1.berkeley.edu (gopher software
required).
        The benefits of these on-line services include easy accessibility
of UCMP holdings by the scientific community, increased efficiency for
specimen loan processing through electronic loan forms, decreased need for
loans by providing images, ease of access through text searches, and
increased public and scientific awareness of UCMP collections and
paleontology in general.  These holdings are linked to the WWW exhibits,
thus emphasizing the bearing of research to museum exhibits.  Searches are
possible using any word or words that appear any place in the file.  Thus,
authors, localities, ages, etc. will yield all records containing them.
Booleanian searches will restrict the search further, so that author, age,
and locality will commonly yield a single or few records.
        Problems have been that locality information must be restricted to
prevent unauthorized or unethical collecting from known sites, a tremendous
increase in server access thus slowing other uses, and increased visibility
of UCMP holdings.  Locality information is provided on-line to county only;
further details may be requested.  These requests are treated like a
specimen loan--they are given only to recognized institutions when
requested by a recognized scientist (or their students).  Server volume,
including exhibits and collections access, increased from a few hundred
files/day to over 14,000+ files on some days in Oct. 1994 (average
8768/day).  In that month, over 3.463 billion bytes of information was
accessed by clients in over 40 countries, all states, and most governmental
and educational agencies. Additional memory has been purchased continuously
to provide this level of access.  Increased visibility means that many
people and agencies now can readily see what the UCMP holds, and make a
variety of non-loan requests ranging from casting specimens to returning
them to supposed legal owners, leading to additional work.
        UCMP's virtual museum includes ever-expanding text, image, and
sound exhibits.  These focus on a variety of topics--geologic time,
phylogeny, evolution.  The phylogeny exhibits include among animals in
general, Vendian/Ediacaran fossils, and vertebrates, a popular "Dinoasaur
Hall".  The "Hall" has a special exhibit on Dilophosarus, with a short oral
history by its discoverer and describer, Dr. Sam Welles of UCMP.  You can
hear him tell about how he found it in 1942, as well as his impressions of
its movie star role in "Jurassic Park"  (probably couldn't spit poison;
definately had no umbrella around its neck).  These exhibits have been
developed for the general public, K-12 education, and the paleontological
community.  Planned exhibits will feature materials for use in courses
taught at Berkeley, but still of interest to a larger audience.
        Links are in place on the "Subway" (modelled after the Metro in
Moscow) that lead to other biological and geological Web sites elsewhere in
the world that would be of interest to the paleontological community.
        Future plans include expanding the virtual museum to all of
paleontology, K-12 exhibits, instructional training, and the addition of
non-type collections as the information is transferred from working
databases (Paradox, D-Base) used within the museum.  The benefits to the
museum have far exceeded the problems or the cost of development.