for inclusion in this section. I t is hoped that coverage at 
least on an occasional basis of all such proj ects will become 
possible, and that this current awareness type of information 
will be of value to MUDPIE readers„ Comments on this new depar¬ 
ture for MUDPIE and contributions to the section are we1 come. 
THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY EDP PROGRAM 
The National Museum of Natural History received modest fund¬ 
ing from Congress in Fiscal Year 1971 to begin the entry of data 
about specimens in collections under its care. Data were entered 
on all new incoming specimens in the Department of Paleobiology 
plus selected collections in the Departments of Vertebrate Zoology 
Invertebrate Zoology and Botany. The key premise underlying the 
program is that museums of natural history have a heavy responsi¬ 
bility to care for the data related to natural history specimens 
just as they do for the specimens themselves. Prior to the advent 
of the computer as a data manipulator and ultimate data receptacle 
and prior to the development of sophisticated methods of data in¬ 
put , it was simply impossible to efficiently manipulate large 
quantities of data about individual specimens. It was recogni zed 
in the NMNH EDP program that in order better to fulfill this re¬ 
sponsibility for care of information about collections it would 
be necessary to demonstrate that advantages could be obtained not 
only in the distant future but in the immediate environment of 
day-to-day museum operations. Consequently considerable effort 
was expended in eliminating or greatly reducing the amount of 
repetitive copying of data in the production of the documents 
needed in curating. Intensive ef fort is also being devoted to the 
production of intermediate leve1 aids to better use of the collec¬ 
tions such as computer-created and cross-indexed catalogs. The 
first of these catalogs, a catalog of Conodont type-specimens, 
was published in September 1971. In the future, catalogs on NMNH 
and other museum holdings of botanical type specimens will be 
forthcoming as wi11 further catalogs or special collections in 
the other departments mentioned above. 
Two more departments of the NMNH will be brought into the EDP 
program in Fiscal Year 1972. The Department of Entomology is pre¬ 
paring data for a revision of the authoritative Catalog of Hymen- 
optera last revised in 1967. The current revision, under the di¬ 
rection of Kar1 Krombein, will be typed on paper tape typewriters 
and read into the Smithsonian* s Honeywell 12 50 computer. The 
SELGEM data storage and retrieval system will be used to accept 
and process these data, and, after editing, correction and update 
runs, will produce a magnetic tape ready for the computer-driven 
Linotron at the Government Printing Office. A good deal of plan¬ 
ning still remains to be done before the project is fully imple¬ 
mented, but there seem to be no insurmountable obstacles to 
carrying this project to completion. The immediate result of 
this type of data processing will be the production of a catalog 
