Some insights into the specifications that would go into those weeks of programming can be had by inspecting, for example, the documents to be found at the following URLs. While they are not adequate specs (not intended to be; and not particularly focusing on the transactions/loans module) for a programmer to sit down and begin programming, they are a hint of what's ahead during that programmers' few weeks effort (and the additional work still before the collections managers'/users' analysts preceding that programming). Peter

Linkname: Logical Data Model for Museum Collections Transaction Management URL: http://nmnhwww.si.edu/gopher-menus/LogicalDataModelforMuseum CollectionsTransactionManagement.html

Linkname: Australian Herbaria Botanical Specimen Data Exchange Standard URL: gopher://muse.bio.cornell.edu/00/standards/hispid/hispid91.std

Linkname: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (UC Berkeley) Collections Data Model URL: gopher://muse.bio.cornell.edu/11/standards/mvz

Linkname: Missouri Botanical Garden Research Data Model URL: gopher://mobot.mobot.org/11/pub