Somehow biologists always behave as if their problems, in this case tracking specimens, lots of specimens or whatever, are somehow unique. Has it ever occurred to any of you that industry has not only managed but mastered how to track anything from individual widgets to warehouses of stuff. As a result, if you look outside the biological community you may be suprised to find that these problems have already been solved in simple easy to implement ways, usually with software and hardware available off the shelf (so to speak).

The same could be said of any kind of database needs. It is sheer arrogance to assume that somehow our problems are unqiue and that only we can solve them. I might add that an enormous amount of federal funds have been wasted because of this attitude.

Lynn S. Kimsey Bohart Museum of Entomology Department of Entomology University of California Davis, CA 95616 USA lskimsey at ucdavis.edu