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Museum and University Data, Program, and Information Exchange

SYMPOSIUM ON INFORMATION PROBLEMS IN NATURAL SCIENCES

This symposium was held December 18-20, in Mexico City, under the sponsor¬
ship of the Universidad Nacional de Mexico and the Smithsonian Institution. It
brought together about 60 people with mutual interest in methods of keeping up
with the large amounts of information available and accumulating. The focus on
various methods of coping with data pertaining to large collections, and work
in progress was discussed. The storage of information by museums, such as
catalogue records, and the rapid retrieval of this information on demand, re¬
ceived considerable attention. Several papers covered attempts to make
bibliographic materials more easy to manipulate. Several methods of preparing,
handling, and writing systematic keys were described, as was work with storage
and retrieval of data derived from specific research projects. Conclusions
drawn by one participant [j. A. Peters] after three days of papers and
discussion include the following (it should be clear that these conclusions
probably reflect my biases, and cannot be interpreted as representing the
results of the symposium in any way):

1. There are two distinct approaches to storage and retrieval of data: the
first involves information pertinent to a specific problem, but of such
a magnitude that it is difficult if not impossible to handle it without
electronic methods; the second involves information that is not immedi¬
ately in demand, and not necessarily pertinent to any existing problem,
but that represents the total body of information about a specific group
of objects, with constant demand for changing parts of that body, although
its total is never required at any one time. The first approach is used
by an individual or group in a specific research project, and the stored
information, finally summarized in a single or series of publications,
might as well be discarded upon completion. The second is used by many
different workers interested in a multitude of projects, is constantly
growing as a consequence of additional collections of objects, and its
value increases both with use and with age.

2. It is now completely feasible to perform both tasks, in the sense that
computers have the capacity to handle the masses of information. Use of
computer methods seem to be equally practical and wise, in fact almost
mandatory, in the first approach mentioned above. There was, however, a
considerable division of opinion concerning the practicality and wisdom
of computer use in the second approach. It seems clear that it can be
practical, in the sense that money has been made available for several
such projects currently in progress, although it has so far invariably
been funded by sources extraneous to the budget of the museum or univer¬
sity concerned. Representatives of smaller museums repeatedly pointed
out that it cannot be practical for their institutions, because their
budgets will never be large enough. Even were one to assume complete

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practicality of such automation, however, the challenges as to its
wisdom persist. These challenges include problems of reliability of
taxonomic determinations, accuracy of data in the catalogues, fre¬
quency of demand by users, the non-repetiLive nature of the data,
and others. It is clear that these challenges will not be answered
until the supporters of the second approach have supplied acceptable
answers to some of the day-to-day queries concerning the collections
of a museum, and have given the scientific community accurate, detailed,
and non-ambiguous data on costs.

3. It is apparent that a considerable amount of duplication of effort is
taking place in the area of storage and retrieval of museum data. Many
different institutions or individual workers are preparing methods for
encoding locality data, scientific names, bibliographic information,
and in many cases the methods will not be compatible with each other in
the future. Worse still, errors are made again and again that have been
experienced and solved by earlier workers, but require repeated laborious
solutions by the next generation. Close coordination of work on mutual
problems is mandatory.

In the hopes that the abstracts of the program might prove of interest
and perhaps of use to the readers of MUDPIE, they are reproduced in part on
the following pages. The rest will be included with a later issue.

4

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Smithsonian Institution
January 10, 1968

2. "AN INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM
FOR BIOLOGICAL AND GEOLOGICAL DATA-DESIGN
CONSIDERATIONS"

Reginald Creighton
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.

The system design attempts to achieve optimum
processing economy while permitting the system user
maximum freedom of activity regarding data prepara
tion, query expression and output presentation.

Due to the disparity of data parameters involved
(birds, crustecia, and rocks) a completely genera¬
lized software system is untenable# A technique
for retrieval program generation was devised whe¬
rein a custom program, tailored to the specific
queries submitted, and to the specific data format
involved, is created on each processing cycle.

Despite the diversity of data parameters en¬
compassed, four major elements of similarity have
been identified. All participants wish to access
data by taxa name, by geographical or political
location; by catalog number; and in certain cases
by stratigraphic designators. The data base
comprised of specimen and bibliographic data is
maintained in a dynamic phylogenetic sequence and
is accessed by four indices: phylogenetic, geo¬
political-, catalog number (intervals) and stra¬
tigraphic, Other basic tenets of the system
include:

1. All consistently formated data is searchable.

2. No abbreviation or user coding is imposed
by the system. The computer translates
natural language input into code and re¬
translates output.

3. User training is minimized.

4. A machine independent language is used (to
enable exchange of software as well as of
dat a) .

The system is now being improved and implemented
by the Information Systems Division, Smithsonian Insti
tution, Washington, D.C.

KEYWORD ELEMENTS:

Retrieval program generation,dynamic phylogeny,hu¬
man factors of query,machine independent query,generali
zed data collection,locational heirarchy,common denomina
tor indices,synonomy rectification,heirarchical indices,
biological numericlature, query batch optimization.

3. "PREPARACION Y MANIPULACION DE CLAVES SISTEMAT1CAS

UTILIZANDO COMPUTADORAS DE TIEMPO COMPARTIDO"

James A. Peters
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.

Se ha construldo una clave para identificacion de los gene-
ros de culebras neotrdpicas utilizando una computadora de tiempo
compartido y el lenguaje llamado "BASIC". La simplicidad de es-
te lenguaje ha permitido a la computadora usar solamente catorce
caracterlsticas, las cuales proveen toda la informacidn necesaria
para las identificaciones. Se puaden inclulr otras caracterlsti¬
cas dentro del programa cuando hay un genera unico, y la computa¬
dora escribe la informacidn adicional en ingles, con los nombres
genericos pertinentes. Cuando hay un genero nuevo o uno no inclul
do anteriormente en la clave, se puede incluir con gran facilidad.
Necesita nada mas que desafiar a la computadora con las catorce
caracterlsticas del nuevo genero, porque esta aprovecha un norr.bre
generico antiguo. Se puede comparar esta con el genero nuevo, y
distinguir entre los das para facilitar la introduccidn del nuevo.
Todos las generos conocidos hasta el momento de Guatemala hasta
Argentina estan en la clave. Otros especialistas que quieran usar
la clave, pueden pedir directamente una copia que sea aceptada por
la computadora, o, si no tienen una computadora de tiempo comparti
do, alias pueden mandar una lista de los ejemplares con las cator¬
ce caracterlsticas para desafiar a nuestra computadora.

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4. "A COMPUTERIZED INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEM

FOR TAXONOMY"

D. J. Rogers
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado

5, "COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN TAXONOMIC LITERATURE*

Gilbert S. Daniels
Hunt Botanical Library
Pittsburgh^ Pa.

Bibliographical research at the Hunt Botanical Library
on the early literature of botany has been organized to make
maximum use of computer data handling. Lengthy citations
for more than 25,OCX) volumes are stored on computer tapes end
are updated and recollated ©s further research is carried out
on each volume, Date on additional volumes can be merged ©s
it becomes available. Sorting can be done on any category of
information contained in the individual volume records with
hard copy produced by the computer in a form suitable for
direct publication by photo offset. Ancillary research projects
not conceived of initially ©re greatly facilitated by the
versatile access and sorting provided by the computer*

ft

Further applications end implications to taxonomic
literature studies are discussed in this paper*

6. "SOMc ASPECTS OF ON LINE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL LANGUAGES'*

G.K, Hutchinson

Computer Center

Texas Technological College

Lubbock. Texas.

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Information retrieval techniques of interest to museums
include: l) KWIC, 2) Current Awareness, 3) Qwick Qwery, ^and
4) On Line Dialogues. The on-line search is potentially the
most powerful, but requires considerable effort end thoughtful
consideration as to its language design, hardware configuration
end, perhaps more important, the matching of the language to
the hardware vie the software implementation. Retrieval techniques
will be briefly reviewed. Implementation considerations and
evaluation criteria will be discussed.

?. "TELECOMMUNICATION AND ON LINE ACCESS TO COMPUTERS"

Nicholes J. Suszynski
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.

Direct access to the computer from the deskside of a user who has m
need to process his data on a computer is highly desirable. Several
manufacturers moke remote terminals for the computers which facilitate such
interaction. Video data terminals (basically a television tube with a
typewriter keyboard) connected to & computer by way of a telephone line la
by far the best method devised as yet for inputting data to the computer
and for making requests against the computer based data bank. Video data
terminals ere also considerably faster and generally more accurate than other
meens of inputting data (keypunches, verifiers etc.). If this is the case,
why then arsn ? t they used more widely?.

There ©re several reasons for scarcity of remote usage end the two mejor
ones ©re discussed in depth. Despite the pressure from the computer industry
and the users, the common carrier monopoly is slow in improving its tele¬
communication capability. The common carriers 10 ♦ 10 cycle (ten years In
development followed by ten years of manufacturing as compared to computer
industry of 5*5) will continue into the forseeable future. This means that
current characteristics of the communication channel will change very slowly
(noise level, frequency response, capacity of channel etc.]/ ‘

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Also? since 'the users of computer data banks will be separate., 'jcsa ..
their computers by tens and hundreds and often thousands of miles, economic
impact of the telecommunication costs is crucial. The technology of data
transmission is discussed only briefly end main concentration is on economic
aspects of it, showing with slides and charts costs of various lines in -• -•
relation to the distance®

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The second major obstacle to remote multi-processing is the scarcity
the computer systems (hardware end software) capable of economic processing
n the foreground of remote messages, and in the babkground of batch processing
the normal load of the data center (such things as updating of the files with
most current information etc*}. There are isolated exceptions to this, and
they ere in the area of dedicated systems; systems that ers offered for a
special mission such as airline reservation systems, or a demand deposit
accounting system in the banking industry, or general purpose systems having
few options with many limitations which normally are offered in a large city
in order to capitalize on the relatively low cost of the telephone usage. These

general purpose systems are usually offered by the - service bureaus.,

*

The paper will strive to show that nation-wide computer utility with
direct, access to various data barks, although technologically feasible, ia
not economical as yet. That the biggest single cost, in addition to the
initial data conversion needed to establish the date bank, is the cost of data
transmission. That because of it, these networks will form at first in th®
large cities when? the cost of a local telephone cell is negligible. In the
immediate future (2 to 3 years), rather advanced end economical time—shared
systems will be available within cities* Their use outside the city will depend
largely on the size of the telephone bill that will come with it. An overview
of currently available commercial systems will be presented.

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8 . "THE OKLAHOMA MUSEUMS INVENTORY PROJECT"

A. F. Ricciardelli
University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma

During the period 1965-67, a pilot study utilizing the
museums in the State of Oklahoma was conducted to devise a
workable system for inventorying ethnological collections.

It is hoped that such a system may be applicable on a nation
wide basis and e union index of ethnological materials created.
Specifically, this study investigated such matters as the
time and cost required to inventory ethnological specimens to*
determine whether an inventory procedure could be devised >

which would insure reliability end consistency in the data
collected, and to determine the most efficient means for storage
end retrieval of that date, including automatic data processing
systems. Extensive data has been collected on these topics and
various conclusions end recommendations ere presented. As a by¬
product of this study, a workable file containing the data for

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the Oklahoma museums now exists at the Stovall Museum of the .
University of Oklahoma end is available for use by scholars.

9. "A GENERALIZED APPROACH TO INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
THE BIRD AND TAXIR SYSTEMS”

Robert Brill
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado

10. "A WORLD PLANT GERM PLASM RECORD SYSTEM"

C. F. Konsek, Washington State University
K. W. Finlay, University of Adelaide, Australia
B. SigurbjOrnsson, International Atomic Energy
Agency, Vienna, Austria and
G. Delhove, FAO, Roma Italia.

Studies are now wall advanced on an internationally coordinated
system adapted for the storage, retrieval end processing of records
end data by computers. These studies are being conducted by a *
working group on international standardization in crop research data
recording. This working group was established on the recommendation
of e group of scientists essembled at IAEA headquarters in Vienna in
December, 1965, at the invitation of the Directors General of FAO end
IAEA. The working group was given the task of investigating the
possibilities for standardization of data recording procedures and
developing a model system for records on accessions of food, feed and
fiber plants.

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A series of studies on a preliminary trial system fcr storage
end retrieval of records by computer were successfully completed in
february, 1567 by the coordinator and colleagues with the guidance and
assistance of other working group members end the IAEA computer staff.

A number of preliminary recommendations on data recording procedures were
prepared for review. The FAC-IAEA V.'crxing Group on Standardization in
Crop Research Cate Recording will also participate in the International
Biological Program (IBP) Section on Germ Plasm Exploration, Maintenance
end Evaluation. As a part of this program, seme standardized procedures
have been proposed for records on ns* germ plasm obtained from, plant
explorations, from induced mutations end from hybridization or selection
programs as well as for records on existing collections of germ plasm
being maintained at stations over the world.

A model for the organization and integration of internationally
standardized records has been developed end it is proposed to establish
e coordinated world plant germ plasm record system, including the
central record file at FAO in Rome. Wide scale field tests of the
proposed system are being planned. Holders of a number of the major
world collections of wheat germ plasm stocks will be asked to participate
in this test. The system will also be used in plant exploration and
adaptation projects of IBP and in programs coordinated by FAQ and FAQ/lAEA.

' 11. IS PRQYECT0 PILOTO DE RECUPERACION AUTOMATICA DE INFORMACIOf

DEL HER3ARIQ NACIONAL DE LA

L s Alonso g L.Scheinvar y A. Gomez-Fcmpa, inoLituto de Biologle

U, N, A. M. f Mexico

De presents el proyecto piloto de recuperacion automatics de
la informacion, realizado en el Herbario Nacional del Instituto
de Biologla.

Se tomaron como base los 3,500 ejemplares de Pteridcphyta.

Se describe el formato y codificscion seguidos con ejemplifica —
cion de los sistemas que fueron utilizados,

El programs fue elaborado en lenguaje SPAR y se usd la com —
putadora Bsndix C D C G 20 del Centro de Calculo Electronico da
la U. N. A. M.

Se presenta la codificacion de las pregu~tss y algunas res—
puestas seleccionadas.

Se mencionan algunas aplicaciones practises para el funciona
miento de un herbaria y su major utilizacidn.

Papers 12 and 13 were not abstracted nor presented#