A grant has been awarded to Illinois State Museum Society under the direction of Dr. Jessica Theodor for partial support of a workshop for museum collection managers, curators, database administrators and information scientists to discuss ways of improving collections database efforts in paleontological collections. The workshop will be held May 31 -June 1, 2005 at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, IL. Participants have been chosen to represent the diversity of paleontological collections in taxonomic scope, geographic scope and collection size. The goals of the workshop are (1) to educate paleontological collections managers and curators about community collections data standards in collections dealing with extant taxa, and efforts to link collections data in distributed networks; (2) discuss, establish and document the community database standards for paleontology and how they differ from neontological collections, so that paleontological collections are better able to plan for databasing efforts and more effectively seek funds to support database activities and coordination; (3) to exchange ideas and information about the specific needs of paleontological collections in designing future versions of collections management software and distributed data sharing protocols; and (4) to discuss future coordination of distributed network efforts and facilitate building informal networks to improve both research and public access to the wealth of paleontological information available in museums.
Information about the fossil record is critically important in testing long-term patterns of biotic responses throughout earth history. Improving collections database infrastructure will greatly impact our ability to serve the research community and will better position fossil collections to maintain existing financial support and attract new funding sources. To promote these goals beyond the life of this workshop, we will produce a web site, documenting the resources and ideas proceeding from the workshop in an easily accessible and easily updated format for use by paleontological collections around the world.
