REDESIGNING THE WEBSITE DATABASE OF FLORISSANT FOSSIL SPECIMENS FROM MULTIPLE MUSEUMS: SHARING INFORMATION BETWEEN REPOSITORIES, RESEARCHERS, AND FEDERAL AGENCIES

Paleontological specimens from the Eocene Florissant Formation of Colorado, including the area of present-day Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument, have been collected since the 1870s. These collections were distributed to at least 17 different museums based on affiliations of the original researchers. The National Park Service (NPS) completed on-site collection inventories at all of these repositories in order to develop a database documenting all published specimens including catalog records, new digital images, and corresponding publications. This database culminated in a website that was completed by the NPS and made available to the public in 2002. A new, ongoing project was initiated in 2007, in collaboration with the University of Colorado at Boulder, to migrate and update the data into a customized application of Specify 6. This new application provides the benefits of being able to easily add new data, edit existing data, and the ability to export data as a Darwin Core Archive, which facilitates sharing these data with other paleontology and biodiversity portals via the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History’s IPT server. Another benefit of moving the data into Specify 6 is a customizable web application that allows for searching a cache of the data directly via the project website. The website provides a single source for data management that can be used by museum repositories, researchers, and government agencies for multiple purposes in locating Florissant specimens and publications, compiling taxonomic lists, and providing information useful in resource management.