Queensland Museum
Queensland Museum (http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/) is making a range of species information and data from its natural history collections available through the Atlas of Living Australia.
Contribution to the ALA
Queensland Museum will provide a range of content through the Atlas, including:
- Biological, palaeontological and geological collection data, images and phenotypic data from the permanent collections of the Queensland Museum
- Images of primary type specimens of marine and terrestrial vertebrates and land snails
The museum will make these data available through its new Vernon Collection Management System.
Vernon Collection Management System
The Queensland Museum holds collections of over 1.2 million registered specimens and objects ranging from Biodiversity and Geosciences to Cultural Histories.
The Collection Management team is presently implementing Vernon software to manage the data associated with these collection items. Vernon is a relational database that provides ease of use, functionality and flexibility. It supports both cultural and natural history collections and has been developed over a period of twenty years. All Vernon modules are compatible with international standards including SPECTRUM. In addition, Vernon is both Darwin Core and Dublin Core compliant.
To date, data relating to twenty one of Queensland Museum's twenty five unique collections is stored in the Vernon Collection Management System. Approximately 900,000 collection records are available through Vernon and over 27,000 object/specimen ID images are also stored.
The final phase of the project will include the migration of Arachnids, Corals, Tropical Natural History and Maritime Archaeology.
A large component of the project involves data cleansing and rationalising authority lists, which have evolved independently in the disparate legacy systems, used at Queensland Museum over the last three decades.
In addition we are currently developing the internal and external web browser and enabling access to collection data in museum galleries, continuing with data cleansing of authority lists, rollout of activities modules including conservation and treatment, loans, exhibitions and valuations, and developing the Geographical Information Systems interface.
In addition to the registered database collection (defined as the ‘Queensland State Collection’), the Queensland Museum also has a commitment to capture data on the registered and unregistered collections into the Vernon system (together defined as the ‘Research Collections’). Since these latter collections exceed approximately 10 million specimens or objects this task is onerous and its progress completely dependent on securing additional resources. It is nonetheless a goal of the museum to grow the State Collection through concerted databasing of the backlog.
For further details please contact Ms Cecelia Ryan, Manager, Collection and Business Information Systems: cecelia.ryan@qm.qld.gov.au.
18 November 2008
