Librarian John Murdoch in the United States National Museum, before 1893. This is now the rare-book room for the 

 Institution. 



key to the snakes of Latin America. . . . Insertion of . . . 

 basic data . . . results in a print-out of the correct generic 

 name in less than four seconds.'" 



The use of computers in individual research projects 

 is of increasing importance throughout the Museum, 

 but the greatest impact of data processing has been on 

 general information processing and retrieval problems. 

 In 1966 "funds provided by the Office of Systematics 

 enabled the department of invertebrate zoology to pur- 

 chase equipment with which one operator can catalog 

 all the very large number of collections being acces- 

 sioned by the department, and which at the same time 

 prints index cards on as many parameters as desired. 

 In addition, the same operation automatically generates 

 paper tape bearing the data from the collections, and 

 these data may be inserted automatically in a central 

 data center. It has been estimated that as much as 60 

 percent increase in the efficiency of the cataloguing 

 operations is gained by having this equipment."" The 



concept is fine, even if the language seems quaint in 

 the light of today's machines. Paper tape machines were 

 eventually declared surplus, though one probably should 

 have been sent over to the Museum of American His- 

 tory as an artifact. 



Data Processing had its first home in Room 206 on 

 the second-floor balcony; people found the office by 

 looking to where the elephant's trunk pointed. Next 

 Data Processing went to the third floor, adjacent to the 

 director's office on the west side of the building. In 

 1972 it moved several doors down the hall to offices 

 vacated by oceanographers and ecologists. It is still in 

 the same area, but the rooms have been partitioned 

 and repartitioned. Even that has not made sufficient 

 space, so an additional room has been built out into 

 the main corridor. 



During the mid-196()s cataloguing of selected min- 

 erals, sea birds, and crustaceans was tried as an exper- 

 iment, using machines to alleviate the burden of routine 



Shared Facilities 



149 



