Businesses and gamesters aren't the only ones benefiting from the computer revolution. Consider museums, with thousands and thousands of items to keep track of. We used to do it with card files organized by the most important information. If other data were important for retrieval, a duplicate file organized in a different manner had to be created. Each card had to be written or typed, identifying and at least briefly describing the item. A card misfiled was lost forever or until chance brought it to notice again.
Contrast this with today's computerized databases. Entered once,
objects can be sorted in ways only limited by the number of data connected with them.
It's a cinch, for example, for the Centennial Museum to bring up all specimens of
fossil foxes from a geographic location collected in a given year by a specific
collector. So, has computerization of collections allowed museums to make a giant step
forward? In some ways, yes, but in these times of dwindling financial support, too
often it merely allows us to keep our heads barely above water.
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.