CompuServe Messages

Nathan, Before the USGS data is made available electronically only, it would be very helpful if "the rest of us" could gain access to it at a connect speed that was faster than glacial. Right now, I could drive to Spokane, find a parking space, walk a few blocks to the USGS office, find a paper copy of what I want, pay for it, hike back to my truck, and drive home, before any of their bulletins could be downloaded and saved on my harddisk. (Perhaps I could even call them on the telephone, give them my credit card number, and have it delivered by snail mail before the download was compelted!) If West's publishing is such a stranglehold, why doesn't some other company step in and do a similar job? As far as my mineral database goes–it is coming out, soon. I am currently giving it the final edit with some wonderful assistance from Doug. I sent him a short version of it (common minerals only) so he could review the format and inform me of problems in formatting it for DOS/Windows from my Mac. Currently, I have several small editing chores to perform in reformatting the entire database to the general layout of what Doug suggested a few months ago to make it more useful for searches. Also, I didn't work on it during much of 1992 and 1993, so I have to go through the American Mineralogist and other publichations to add the new minerals from that period. Yes, Idaho is in a new ice age, and at times I feel like hibernating so spring will hurry (I WANT TO GO MINERAL COLLECTING/HIKING/CAMPING IN THE MOUNTAINS!!!), but I am working on the database nearly every day (several hours today). Considering the fact that it represents many hundreds of hours of work, it won't be free online, but will be "low priced." Presently, I am trying to find out about all the others availalbe (which so far are priced in the 'hundreds of dollars' or are only basic with not much more than mineral name and formula) to help in determining the price and final decision on how to make it available. At this moment, I expect the price to be $30-50 and at first sell it as raw data only to put into your own database (or even use in your word processor for just simple searches), then later provide it with a front end from a runtime version of Cause and Effect or FoxPro. Currently, the raw data for more than 3,400 minerals is nearly a megabyte, it includes mineral, formula, system, group, colors, luster, opacity, streak, hardness (L-H), density (L-H), number of cleavages, cleavage data, fracture, habit and info (series, morphs, mag., fl, etc.). Lanny