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It interests me so

Access is a possibility.

I use Specify for a small dataset of around 3000 records and find it very suitable for my limited purposes. The learning curve to use its full capabilities looks fairly steep although I have not attempted to use these so this might be more my impression than reality.

Hello Lynn; Two of your correspondents mention Filemaker Pro and Windows Access. An important difference comparing the two is that Access has a capacity limit of 4 gigabits while Filemaker has no capacity limit. If you are archiving images, that would influence your choice. My department uses Access to manage its collections but no images are involved so there won't be a problem with the potential size of this teaching collection. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

Biotracks APP is popular in China, http://www.biotracks.cn/

To add to my previous comment about Specify please see the website https://www.sustain.specifysoftware.org

Specify is free, multiuser, used by a number of museums around the world and has an option of web based access and searches. My first comment may have given the wrong impresssion since I use only a tiny fraction of what the software is capable of managing.

I would also recommend Specify, which is used today here at the Zoology Museum of USP, in São Paulo, Brazil. I'm also still learning about many of its functionalities, but it is fairly customizable, and one can get a lot of help in the foruns and blogs in the site that Lynn shared the link.

Creo que la respuesta depende del rendimiento que usted busque. Quizás le sea interesante tener en consideración esta sencilla e intuitiva base de datos:

http://www.trilobase.com/

We also use Specify at White Sea branch of Zoological museum of Moscow State University. Our database contains more than 12000 collection objects. It is possible to attach illustrations, publications, DNA sequences etc.

Hola, Alejandro Catalá Jimenez:

Te recomiendo evitar todo software de compañías privadas. Contrario a lo que comentó Jens Kleb, no hay ninguna compañía en el mundo que sea "future proof". Además, mientras más grandes y poderosas son las compañías, más vulnerables son los usuarios a las políticas de precios, siempre cambiantes e inflacionarias. Por eso es que muchos museos y universidades en el mundo se están moviendo hacia el software de código abierto (open source software). Ese tipo de software permite que cualquier usuario con los conocimientos requeridos pueda adaptar el software a sus necesidades o a las de su institución. Sinceramente te recomiendo Specify. Lo están usando muchos museos del mundo, inclusive museos de Europa y de Estados Unidos. Specify es la mejor solución en las condiciones de Cuba.

Saludos desde Finlandia,

Carlos

I worked at the USP Zoology Museum using Specify. This software will supply all your demand. He is very good. However you will need a good server and a professional to fix the bugs that occurred throughout the work.

Hola Alejandro,

En México en la Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad (CONABIO, https://www.gob.mx/conabio) usamos el sistema de información Biótica (http://www.conabio.gob.mx/biotica5/) para el manejo de las colecciones biológicas. Es un software de acceso libre y los requerimientos del sistema son muy básicos. Espero te sea útil. Saludos

In Colombia we use the software Specify in the Entomological Museum of Cenicafé. The problem with these databases is that they are initially free to access, but after a certain time they become outdated very quickly and become very slow. To be able to upgrade to newer versions, you have to pay to obtain technical assistance to migrate the data because it is not an easy task to do.

Hi. I would certainly recommend BRAHMS for botanical collection (herbarium, living collection, seeds etc).

All the Natural History Museums in Denmark use Specify, and are very satisfied with the program. It can be customised to your specifications and if you use Specify 7 it is fully browser based meaning you can manage the collection from a tablet or smartphone, really practical when you are working in the collection

At the Natural History Museum London, Ke EMU Collection Management Software is used (https://www.axiell.com/solutions/product/emu). Far from being optimal and user-friendly, this software, however, is very powerful offering wide selection of options to store and interconnect your data. This software is not free and, moreover, rather expensive but provides reliable customer support for your money.

We were in the process of transferring from Access to Specify for our invertebrate collections a couple of years ago, but were having a number of technical issues with our IT people and firewalls. I've used Biota personally which I really like, but Specify provided many additional features. The problem with these programs is that they are often developed and supported by one person/institution and when the person retires or funding runs out, the program collapses. When Specify changed to a yearly fee service, we couldn't commit the funds and had to remain with Access (clunky but does the job).

Now that it has been 10 months since your original question, I'd be interested to know what you have decided on.

We are also using Specify (https://www.sustain.specifysoftware.org/products/specify-7/). It is Open Sours project.

Hola Alejandro Catalá Jimenez

siguiendo tu pregunta, me interesa saber cuál fue su elección y cómo les ha funcionado. Estoy en busca de propuestas para la Colección de Paleontología de la UNAM y, aunque Specify parece hasta el momento la mejor opción, los comentarios que he leído indican que en un futuro será necesario pagar las cuotas anuales para que el software tenga buen funcionamiento y esto no estoy segura de que podamos cubrirlo.

Some collections at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin use a wonderful collection database developed by the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt: SeSam. The great thing is, that it runs in a webbrowser, very fast and very smoothly. We are using it since 15 years without complaint. Other collections in our house use Specify.

My experience in using Specify 6 in entomological museums in Iran has proven to me the user-friendliness of this software and the good management of the collection.

If you want to have a look at SeSam, the great piece of collection database from the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, that I recommended two posts ago, please open the database interface in your browser:

http://zmb.sesam.senckenberg.de

...e.g. have a look at my Crustacea database and play around with it.... click on search select GBIF Crustacea and put in for example Gammarus in the genus field and click on any of the search results... it is a readonly database... no worries..,nothing can be changed or deleted

Wonder if anyone has used more generic open-source "knowledge-management" software like Mediawiki (possibly with Wikibase that runs Wikidata) - this paper looks interesting - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/5756517

Also this

https://hangingtogether.org/?p=8002

Shyamal Lakshminarayanan ... I do not think that these solutions do they same as specific collection management databases....

Charles Oliver Coleman - thanks, it would be interesting to see what collection management software do differently - Page et al. in their survey here Article Training and hackathon on building biodiversity knowledge graphs

Shyamal Lakshminarayanan ... have a look, if you want to get an example of a collection database at the link further up (see my post from the 25th of September).... this is the collection database that we use in our museum for the marine groups. It gives an impression about the details such a database should offer. Other databases like Specify! support even more fields and tables. This database is not only a basis for science, but also allows you as a curator or collection manager to print labels or organize loans and record the history of every collection item.

One more thought! It is not neccessary to program new databases, there are more than enough ... the problem is to find money, people and time to hack in the details. The collection I am responsible for consists of 30.000 lots. It took my staff and volunteers and myself more than 10 years to put in the data, find out coordinates, get infos from the original handwritten catalogues, records of the collectors and letters. The big collections in our museum, e.g. Coleoptera comprise 6 million specimens. You can imagine that the database is not the main problem, but how to organize the capture of the information.

This is probably very late in the game, but I would recommend taking a look at Symbiota. As an example, check the Guatemala Portal (https://serv.biokic.asu.edu/guatemala/portal/index.php). In my opinion it is user friendly and it has several advantages once the portal is set up: (1) the portal is managed entirely online, so you can add new data from anywhere, not just in computers where certain software is installed; (2) data can be exported directly to GBIF without requiring a national/regional GBIF node; (3) it does not require a local database ot local IT support; (4) existing data from spreadsheets can be easily incorporated; (5) data can be periodically exported into spreadsheets if desired; (6) images can also be included as part of the specimen data.

So, essentially you don't need to install anything and once your portal is set up, you can add data from anywhere and export data to GBIF almost immediately. As for longevity and support, Symbiota is within the same team that is managing the NEON biorepositories in the US (is the data management that they are using: https://biorepo.neonscience.org/portal/collections/index.php), so it is funded/supported for at least 30 years.

I encourage anyone to reach out to Samanta Orellana to talk about the Guatemala Portal experience (her contact is on the Portal website). She posted a thread on Twitter (in Spanish) about it: https://twitter.com/BionomiaTrack/status/1359924038311710724?s=20

Additional documentation about Symbiota can be found at: https://symbiota.org/docs/symbiota-introduction/symbiota-help-pages/

Arctos is yet another example to consider and is not very costly yet very comprehensive. It is used in various natural history museums: https://arctos.database.museum/

We use MySQL, but we will very likely switch to Specify in the coming years. This applies to many other collections in Switzerland.

It's not exclusive for natural history but Samvera is an open source framework (Ruby) for digital repositories and it also has a large and supportive community!

https://samvera.org/samvera-open-source-repository-framework/

The RSM uses KE-Emu. It has a plethora of applications and tools, but the downside is that a license is quite expensive. It also has a pretty steep learning curve, but the IT support is very good.

Dear Charles Oliver Coleman ,

Is there a guide or a manual available in order to create a new SeSam database from scratch (with limited programming knowledge!) or even better, starting with an Excel table?

(Same question could actually apply for everyone who has recommended Specify. Christian Klug ? Or Marcelo Veronesi Fukuda ? Ilia Gjonov ? Are there any guides or manuals for advanced beginners?)

Thank you.

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