CompuServe Messages

Doug, I believe your suggested uses in the first paragraph all fit nicely under my second use–as an "encyclopedia" or source of data on a particular mineral or minerals. But yes, hopefully it would get lots of use. It is amazing what one comes up with when asking it to do something like "display all minerals with Be," or whatever. (actually it chokes on "whatever"). I have been thinking of what you say. Ultimately it could be a hypertext type of database that would link to crystal drawings, crystal form data, optic data, photos, etc. And from there to type localities, localities, major specimens in museums… I wonder when CD-ROMs will hold about 5x what they do now! My original thought along this was something I proposed in Mineral News about 3-4 years ago-a photographic encyclopedia of minerals with many photos of each mineral (as appropriate–some only occur as one grain in a polished section for instance), and expand that idea to the hypertext type tool. The CD-ROM is the best way and actually, George Gerhold at Western Washington Univ. has beat me to the punch on that (sort of) he has nearly completed such a critter for the "common" minerals. Lanny