Informatics Timeline

1960s

• 1965-7 [UCMP] Grad students digitize 152,000 specimen records and 84,000 localities using 80- column punch cards, magnetic tape, and computerized paper catalogs.

• 1967 [UCMP] Rensberger & Berry publish “An automated system for retrieval of museum data.”

1970s

• 1975-8 [UCMP] re-digitizes its vertebrate data using SELGEM (Smithsonian) Cobol – IBM 360 JCL system (80-col punch cards to mag tape + paper listing) improvement: multiple cards for 1 record

• 1979 [MVZ] begins digitizing mammal records using Taxir (Fortran – IBM 360 ) (U. Mich)

• 1979 [UCMP] transfers its data from SELGEM to Taxir

1980s

• 1984 [UCMP] acquires two PCs for in-house use, uses dBASE/Pascal for label printing, data entry

• 1984-5 [MVZ] gets PCs, writes Pascal programs for data entry into Taxir, uploaded to mainframe

• 1984-5 [UCJeps] begins to database its type specimens using dBASE • 1987-8 [BotGdn] begins to database its specimens using dBASE

• 1988 [IST] Advanced Technology Planning (ATP) is formed within IST

1990s

• 1990 [QAL] relational database evaluation: Sybase, Ingres, Oracle – Sybase is chosen

• 1991 [IST] Architectural Slide Library is developed by ATPusing Ingres (later Sybase)

• 1990-2 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology proposes data model (incl. Blum, Lindberg)

• 1991 [UCMP] abandons Taxir in favor of dBASE on in-house PCs

• 1992 [UCJeps] SMASCH starts (DB architecture based on Arch. Slide Library Project)

• 1992 MIP established – takes over Arch. Slide Library, SMASCH

• 1993 [UCMP] puts type specimen data online via gopher

• 1993 [DLP] CalPhotos developed as Chabot using PostGres, TCL

• 1993 Mosaic appears (first web browser) March

• 1993 [UCMP] website comes online (grad student Rob Guralnick) August

• 1994-5 [UCMP] shifts from dBase to Paradox for specimen database

• 1995 Digital Library Project begins

• 1995 [DLP] CalPhotos goes online as “Cypress”

• 1997 [DLP] CalFlora comes online

• 1997-8 [MVZ] transfers data from Taxir to Sybase

• 1999 [MVZ/DLP] online specimen DB goes live

• 1999 [BotGdn] dBASE database ported to Sybase with xdb interface 2000s

2000s

• 2000 [MVZ/DLP] AmphibiaWeb goes live

• 2002 [UCMP/DLP] online specimen database goes live

• 2002 BNHM Informatics begins

• 2003 [EME/DLP] database goes live

• 2003-4 Distributed systems PaleoPortal, HerpNet, Manis, get up and running

**incomplete** more to come **