Thursday, September 6, 2007

Orientation

Arctos is a collection managment system that integrates natural history museum catalog data, specimen acquisition and usage data, and collection management tools into one cohesive system. Most data are available online; select data have been masked by individual Curators.

There are currently 2 public instances of Arctos:

Arctos.database.museum contains data from the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Museum of Southwestern Biology in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and several smaller institiutions. Mvzarctos.berkeley.edu contains data from the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, California. Data are not shared.

Basic functionality is available by simply clicking the above links. More search and interface options are available by creating an Arctos account. (Accounts are not shared between instances.)