AUTOMATION IN MUSEUM COLLECTIONS' By Raymond B. Manning StnifJtsonian Instttiition, Washington, D. C. Introduction For a little over a year now several of us in the Smithsonian have been associated with a project designed to investigate possible uses of electronic data processing ( EDP ) for computer storage and retrieval of specimen-associated data. The project has been funded under a contract with the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. It is a joint effort by members of the staff of the Museum of Natural History and Information S\'stems Center, Smithsonian Institu-tion. The project is based on the thesis that a museum collection is more than an assemblage of inanimate objects or dead orga-nisms; it is a \'ast information resource which we cannot ade-quately use with current methods of record keeping. A second factor, which is also quite important, is that collections are con-tinually growing at a rapid rate. In the Department of Inverte-brate Zoology alone, the collections are increasing b\' at least 200,000 specimens per year. This trend is hardly likely to change in the near future, and if specimen-associated data in the collections is too difficult to obtain now, it will be even less available in the future. If computerized data record-keeping systems are going to be developed and used, the project must be started now. Delays will only increase the difficulties and the cost. The MNH project was designed to set up record-keeping sys-tems in three separate areas of the museum: marine rocks, un-1 This work was supported by a grant from the Library and Information Sciences Research Branch, Office of Education, Department of Health, Education, and Wel-fare, OEG-I-07I 159-4425. 55— Prog. Biol. Soc. Wash., Vol. 82, 1969 (671)
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