This mail was answered by 12 of 24 contacts, with varying degrees of attention (see 

Appendix B). For the non respondents, some information from archives or personal 

knowledge was added.  

The results are detailed in the following document and summarized in the attached Excel 

spreadsheet. We also tried to summarize the limitations imposed by the database 

management system itself (chapter 3 below), because all systems investigated stated that 

 limitations to scalability  depended on the DBMS. Consequently, we replaced that item 

with  DBMS  in the spreadsheet.  

Outlook 

The report should be completed by either establishing contact to the non responding 

program providers or by excluding those who do not respond. From the point of view of 

contents this report can just provide the base for further investigation, which in our 

opinion should be extended to cover subjects like: 

Nomenclatural types: categories of types, including typoid material, cleptotypes, etc.? 

Is the verification procedure of the nature of the type included?  Protologue 

information for types? Who said it was the category of type that is indicated in the 

database?  

Images: existence and form of link(s) to specimen(s)? Can several images per unit be 

linked under appropriate categories (e.g. detail of x, output from EM of x)? Can 

(additional) links be made to taxon names? How extensive is the metadata coverage?  

Rights: is unit level IPR covered? How are permits managed? Room for restrictions 

on dissimination of information (e.g. for protected plant locations or according to 

specific  stakeholder's  conditions for use)? 

Collection management:  loans, specimen exchange, general transaction management, 

curation tasks, etc.  

Determination history: can old determinations be tracked? Are they fully searchable? 

Can known duplicates in other institutions be cited with their determination?  

Complex unit relationship: are the following cases covered: several specimens   

single unit; several units   single specimen; multiple derivations (e.g. specimen batch 

or duplicate set   single specimen   sample from single specimen   preparation from 

sample); host parasite; nest eggs; plant   pollinator(s); etc. ?  

Rapid data entry, different procedures for existing collections (taxa with low 

variation, provenance highly variable) vs. new collections (provenance with low 

variation, taxa highly variable)? 

Possibilities / plans for data capture in the field and online data capture via WWW? 

Language and internationalization: language versions available? Adaptation of user 

interface to different languages possible? Support for non English character sets?  

Some of these questions can be answered by looking at the respective system's informa 

tion model, so providers should be urged to supply that information. In other cases more 

intensive consultation with the developers is needed. Discussions with actual users of the 

systems are needed to gain insight into usability of the software. The results of the 

present survey should be made available on the WWW and linked to from GBIF and 

other sites to encourage software providers to instigate the updating process.  

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