Proceedings of the 7th and 8th Symposia on Collection Building and Natural History Studies in Asia and the Pacific Rim,
edited by Y. Tomida et al., National Science Museum Monographs, (34): 103–116, 2006.

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum: Collections, Databases and the Web
Mark A. McGroutherFish Section, Australian Museum
6 College Street, Sydney, NSW 2010, Australia(e-mail: mark.mcgrouther@austmus.gov.au)

Abstract The Australian Museum was established in 1827. Since 1864 there has been an almost
unbroken sequence of ten fish Curators/Researchers. Today the Fish Section is staffed by one fulltime Ichthyologist, two retired Research Fellows, a Collection Manager and several technical staff.
The Australian Museum Fish Collection (AMS) is part of a larger national collection made up ofseven major collections and several smaller collections. Statistics are presented that compare themajor collections. In December 2004 the AMS collection contained over 1.6 million specimens(168,800 lots) comprising 635,000 adult fishes (136,000 lots) and approximately 1,000,000 larvae(32,800 lots). The type collection contained 2,271 type species (11,302 specimens in 4,726 lots).
In the mid 1970s digitisation of collection data began. In 1998 a Compaq Proliant server was purchased to store the databases and to serve data to the Web. Data have remained on this server until thepresent time, but will shortly be moved to a SUN server. The Australian Museum used KE Titan database software from 1987 until 1995 when data were moved to KE Texpress. The fish databases are
currently in the process of being upgraded to KE EMu software. The Australian Museum Fish Website first went online in 1995 and now contains approximately 3000 pages (8000 files). It gives users
access to over 850 species fact sheets primarily on Australian fishes and other content areas including
online access to fish collection data and maps. In the twelve months between November 2004 andOctober 2005, the site received nearly 7 million page views (2.5 million visits). The benefits anddrawbacks of developing and maintaining a website are briefly discussed. Three recent projects thathave involved the AMS Fish Section are discussed, along with the future plans for collection development, databases and the website.
Key words:

Australian Museum, fish collection, databases, Web, website.

Staff
The Australian Museum was established in 1827. Since 1860 when Gerard Krefft was appointed as Sub-Curator (Director in 1864), there have been ten fish Curators/Researchers. The
first two Curators, Krefft and Edward Ramsay were employed as Directors of the Australian Museum, and both worked on other animal groups in addition to fishes. Despite his interest in reptiles, mammals and fossils, Krefft cemented his reputation as an ichthyologist with the description in 1870 of the Queensland Lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri. Ramsay’s primary area of
research was ornithology although he co-authored fish papers with James Ogilby. His major contribution to Australian ichthyology was negotiating the purchase of a portion of Military Surgeon
Francis Day’s important fish collection from southern Asia, and thereby significantly increased
the AMS type specimen holdings. Dates of tenure for the ten fish Curators/Researchers are104

M. A. McGrouther

Table 1.

Table 2.

Australian Museum ichthyologists and years of tenure at the Australian Museum.
Staff member

Years of tenure at AM

Johann Ludwig Gerard Krefft (1830–1881)
Edward Pierson Ramsay (1842–1916)
James Douglas Ogilby (1853–1925)
Edgar Ravenswood Waite (1866–1928)
Allan Riverstone McCulloch (1885–1925)
Gilbert Percy Whitley (1903–1975)
Dr Frank Hamilton Talbot (1930–)
Dr John Richard Paxton (1938–)
Dr Douglass Fielding Hoese (1942–)
Dr Jeffrey Martin Leis (1949–)

1860–1879
1874–1894
1884–1890
1892–1906
1898–1925
1922–1964
1965–1975
1968–1998
1971–20041979–

Current staff of the Australian Museum Fish Section.
Position name

Permanent employee

Name

Research Scientist (1)Collection Manager (1)Yes
Yes
Yes (full time)Yes (half time)
No (retired 2004)
No (retired 1998)
No (2 years at AM)

Dr Jeffrey Leis
Mr Mark McGrouther
Dr Thomas Trnski
Ms Sally Reader
Dr Douglass Hoese
Dr John Paxton
Dr Hiroyuki Motomura

No

Ms Amanda Hay

No

Ms Lawrie Davis
Ms Barbara Harvey
Mr Rowan Kleindeinst
Mr Peter Swieca

Technical Officers (2)Research Fellows (2)Visiting researcher (1)Technical Officer on grant funds
awarded to Leis (1)Volunteers (4)shown in Table 1.
Today the Fish Section includes four permanent staff (one of whom is employed half time),
one person on grant funds awarded to Leis, two retired Research Fellows, one long-term visiting
researcher, and four volunteers. Sadly, the number of staff in the Section has decreased over thelast decade with the retirement of two Research Scientists and the loss of two non-permanentTechnical Officer positions in 2004 (Kerryn Parkinson and John Pogonoski). A listing of current
staff is shown in Table 2. More detailed information on Australian Museum Fish Section staff isavailable at http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/about/research/staff.htm.
The Australian Museum Fish Collection
In December 2004 the Australian Museum Fish Collection contained 635,000 adult specimens (136,000 lots) and approximately 1,000,000 larval specimens (32,800 lots). The type collection contains 2,271 type species (11,302 specimens in 4,726 lots). Most specimens are preserved in 70% ethyl alcohol. The majority of ‘adult’ specimens are stored in glass screw top jars,
although there are specimens stored in over 650 drums and 58 tanks. Larval specimens are storedin screw cap vials in large jars filled with 70% ethyl alcohol.
Supplementary collections include 1282 lots of otoliths, 1241 cleared & stained lots, 630 lots

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum

105

Fig. 1. The oldest specimen in the Australian Museum fish collection, an orangeband surgeonfish, Acanthurusolivaceus (AMS IB.6315), collected in 1858.

Table 3. Summary of outgoing specimen transactions 1995–2004. Recent loan figures contain transactions that include
no specimens. These ‘loans’ usually document the allocation of new AMS registration numbers supplied toresearchers who wish to assign them to manuscript type specimens.

2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995

Outgoingloans

Outgoing
exchanges
and gifts

Outgoing
transfers

Outgoing
specimen
returnsTotal
outgoing
transactions

60
74
62
69
75
103
71
98
101
67

22
22
28
30
11
20
5
12
17
10

1
5
7
2
3
2
6
8
8
9

19
16
2
11
7
5
9
20
12
22

102
117
99
112
96
130
91
138
138
108

of skeletal material, 499 skins and stuffed specimens. Over 1035 specimen lots have been x-rayedon 811 x-ray plates.
The oldest fish in the collection (IB. 6315) is a dry orangeband surgeonfish, Acanthurus olivaceus, which was collected in 1858 by J. MacGillivray in Aneityum, Vanuatu (Fig. 1).
Strengths of the collection include fishes from New South Wales and the Great Barrier Reef,
Queensland. The collection also has strong representation of fishes from temperate rocky reefs,
mesopelagic waters and from the upper slope waters down to 1000 m depth. Additional collection strengths reflect the research interests of Paxton (Myctophidae and other deepsea taxa),
Hoese (gobiods), Leis (larvae) and visiting Collection Fellow, Motomura (Scorpaenidae).
Other collection highlights include three specimens of Goblin shark, Mitsukurina owstoni,
from Australia; four Stout infantfish, Schindleria brevipinguis, the ‘media-hungry’ smallest fishin the world (http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/fish/sbrevip.htm); thirty Queensland
Lungfish, Neoceratodus forsteri; and one Coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae.
There has been a strong loan program for many years. Recently it has become increasingly
difficult to maintain the high number of loans due to reduced staffing resources. A summary of
specimen transactions for the last ten years is shown in Table 3.

106

M. A. McGrouther

Australian Fish Collections
The Australian Museum Fish Collection (AMS) is part of a larger national collection madeup of seven major collections and several smaller collections in other cities around the country.
The major collections house nearly 3 million specimens. Table 4 shows summary statistics of thecollection holdings for the major Australian fish collections in 1992/3 (from Paxton & McGrouther, 1997) and 2004. Summary statistics for the type specimen holdings of AMS and othermajor Australian fish collections are shown in Table 5.
Eight full-time taxonomists work at these institutions. This figure has dropped from ten in
Table 4.

Summary of Australian collection sizes in 1992/3 (from Paxton & McGrouther, 1997) and 2004.

Collection

Adultspecimens(1992/3)

Adult
specimens(2004)%
increase

Larvalspecimens(1992/3)

Larvalspecimens(2004)AMS Sydney
NMV Melbourne
QM Brisbane

457,000
67,000#140,000

635,000
320,000#
250,000

40%
378%
79%

500, 000
00

NTM Darwin

89,000175,357

97%

0

WAM Perth
CSIRO Hobart
SAMA Adelaide
TOTALS

120,000
72,00062,0001,007,000

168,000
83,201?
1,631,558

40%
16%
?
62%

0
100,0000
600,000

1,000,000
38,000041(lots)(lots)
0*50,6451500
1,090,186%
increase

Total
specimens
2004

50%
—
—
—

1,635,000
358,000#
250,000

—
49%
—
81%

168,000
133,846
63,5002,783,744

175,398

AMS=Australian Museum, CSIRO=ISR Munro Fish Collection, NMV=Museum Victoria, NTM=Northern Territory
Museum, QM=Queensland Museum, SAMA=South Australian Museum, WAM=Western Australian Museum.
#
Number of specimens not recorded in database. Figure shown is an estimate based on number of lots x 7 specimens
per lot.
* This reduced figure reflects a more accurate calculation of the number of larvae than was available in 1992/3.
? Figures not available due to lack of staffing in the Fish Section.
Table 5. Summary of fish type specimens in Australian collections in 1992/3 (from Paxton & McGrouther, 1997) and2004.

Collection

Type
specimens/lots(1992/3)

Type
specimens/lots(2004)%
increaseType
species:(1992/3)

Type
species:(2004)%
increase

AMS
WAM
NTM
NMV
CSIRO
QM
SAMA
TOTALS

8,633/3,711
6,559/1,545
1,093/188
392/174
@
/230
#
/476
249/?
16,926/2,613

11,302/4,726
7,420/1,845
2055/395
837/471621/463
#
/644
?/175
4,447/8719

30%/27%13%/19%88%/110%114%/171%–/101%–/35%—
49%/77%

1500
432
69
69
123
365
125
2683

2271
632
400
202
136
307
—
3948

51%
46%
580%
193%
11%
‘15%’—
144%

AMSAustralian Museum, CSIROISR Munro Fish Collection, NMVMuseum Victoria, NTMNorthern Territory
Museum, QMQueensland Museum, SAMASouth Australian Museum, WAMWestern Australian Museum.
@
Figures not available in 1992/3.
? Figures not available due to lack of staffing in the Fish Section.
#
Number of specimens not recorded in database.

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum

107

1992. There are very few young Australian fish taxonomists, and there is no tertiary course insystematic ichthyology available in Australia.
Databasing at the Australian Museum
The earliest Australian Museum register (the Palmer register) was begun in 1877. Traditional
registers were used by the Fish Section for about 100 years. By 1969, eight different registration
number prefixes had been used for fish specimens—A, B, E, S, I1, I2, IA and IB. These were followed by the I3 and I4 registers. In 1979 the entry of data into traditional registers was discontinued and data were hand written on data sheets. This practice continued until the mid 1990s, whenthe electronic printing of data sheets was begun.
Three series of 35 card files are stored in the Fish Section. The first series of 18 drawers
was maintained by Ogilby (tenure: 1884–1890). The second set of 36 drawers was kept by Whitley (tenure: 1922–1964). The third set of 54 drawers was begun around 1900 and contained acard for each lot in the collection until 1988. All three sets of card files provide an historical
record that is still referred to, albeit infrequently. Sometimes they prove immensely valuable. Recently over 100 of Whitley’s cards containing many unpublished records of Oarfish beach strandings were copied and sent to Dr Tyson Roberts to assist in his research. The importance of thesecard files has declined with the entry of data into computer databases.
Digitisation of collection data began in the mid 1970s, when data were loaded onto a CSIROCYBER 76 computer. From 1987 until 1998 three computers were used to store the fish database— a Unison D21, followed by two 386 processor computers. In 1998 a Compaq Proliant 1600
server was purchased to store the databases and to serve data to the Web. Data have remained on
this server until the present time, but during late 2005 or early 2006, will be moved to a SUN
SunFire 280R server. This computer is linked to a 1.4TB SAN and a tape backup robot.
In 1986, data were loaded into Titan databases. Titan database software was first released by
Melbourne based company, Knowledge Engineering in 1984. Titan databases were used until
1995 when data were moved to KE Texpress (http://www.kesoftware.com/texpress/index.html)
databases. Texpress was also developed and released by Knowledge Engineering (now trading
under the name KE Software).
There are currently 18 databases in use by the Fish Section, with the main specimen database
containing approximately 170,000 records. These databases are currently in the process of being
upgraded to the latest KE Software product, KE EMu (see future plans, Digital Records).
The entire registered collection is databased. There is a relatively small but increasing backlog of unregistered fishes that have accumulated over the last few years. This reflects the decreasein human resources available to the Fish Section.
The Data
From the first fish registered in 1858, until 1969, a standard three part registration number
was used. Registration numbers comprised the institution code (AMS) followed by an alpha prefix and a numerical string separated by a full stop, e.g. AMS IA.345.
One year after the arrival of John Paxton in 1968, a four part registration number format was
adopted, e.g. AMS I.22822-009. This registration number format reflects a station-lot registration
system. The first three parts comprise the institution prefix (AMS), the Fish Collection prefix ‘I’(for Ichthyology) and a 5 digit numeric string (e.g. 22822). Together, the prefix and the numeric108

M. A. McGroutherFig. 2.

The October 1997 version of the Australian Museum fish site home page (captured in March 1998).

string comprise the station number. The fourth part of the registration number is a three digit suffix which is preceded by a dash (e.g. -009). In this case, the station number ‘I.22822’ refers to a
trawl station made off north-western Australia in April 1982. The suffix ‘009’ refers to the ninth
lot of fishes registered in station ‘I.22822’ (which currently contains 25 lots).
This station-lot registration system has real advantages. A quick glance at registration numbers I.22822-003 and I.22822-025, reveals that they share the same station number (I.22822) andthus come from the same collecting event. It also reveals that there must be at least 25 lots offishes collected from the station. Another advantage of a station-lot registration system arises if alot of fishes e.g. -025 is re-examined after registration and more than one species is identified
from the lot. In this case it is a simple matter to add a new lot number for the additional species
record. For the example above, the new lot would be -026.
The Australian Museum Fish Website
The Australian Museum Website went online in 1995. In October 1997 the fish site became arecognisable section within the main site after a significant upgrade and the addition of a newfrontpage (Fig. 2).
In February 1998 online access to the fish type database was added to the site. An enquiries
section called ‘Something Fishy’ also came online in 1998, but was subsequently abandoned during the next upgrade and all relevant pages were included in other areas of the site. In November
1999 a specimen mapping facility was added.
In May 2000 a major upgrade of the site (Fig. 3) was made to cope with the increasing content and complexity of the site. It included a new link to fish movies and a ‘What’s new?’ columnthat presented the latest pages to users. The new site also involved a change of site layout andnavigation.
The most recent upgrade went online in November 2004 (Fig. 4). This upgrade involved achange in site layout, navigation and the use of style sheets throughout. Considerable work went
into the navigation design. A ‘card sort’ procedure was used to organise the site into logical units(Robertson, 2001).
All site upgrades were made by the Australian Museum webteam in consultation with theauthor. The composition of the webteam is shown in Table 6.
The site currently contains approximately 3000 pages (8000 files). Most of the content has
been written by the author, with some input from other members of the Fish Section. The site isdivided into ten major navigation areas. These are shown in Table 7.
The majority of the site content is located in the ‘Find a Fish’ section, which contains over

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum

Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.
Table 6.

109

The May 2000 version of Australian Museum fish site home page (captured in September 2004).

The November 2004 version of the Australian Museum fish site home page (captured in November 2005).
Composition of the Australian Museum Webteam.
PositionFull or part time

Number

AM Staff

Web Manager
Designer
Researchers/Editors
Web Production
Web Production

Full-time
Full-timePart-time
Full-timePart-time

1
1
2
1
1

Y
Y
Y

Contractor

Y
Y

110
Table 7.

M. A. McGrouther
Major content areas of the Australian Museum Fish Website.

Navigation Area

Content

About Fishes
Fish Department
Collections
Larval fishes
Fish Links
Find a fish
Identify a fish
Student stuff
FAQs
Fish Movies

What is a fish?, fish versus fishes, fish scales, bones, parts of a fish
Staff, research, fieldwork, Research Associates, students, volunteers, photographers, visitors
Data, maps, types, collection tour, papers citing AMS specimens
AMS larval fish site, database, descriptions, gallery, links
Relevant external links
Over 850 fish fact sheets, glossary
Link to the Australian Museums Online (AMOL) fish key
Fish dissections, ‘fish in focus’, fish key, fish memory game
Frequently asked questions about fishes and the collection
Short fish movies in Windows Media and Quicktime formats

Fig. 5. Australian Museum Fish Website statistics from May 1999 to October 2005. page views visitor
sessions.

850 species fact sheets primarily on Australian fishes. This is the fastest growing part of the site.
Early site visitation statistics were not kept for the fish site, but rather for the entire Australian Museum website. Separate statistics for the fish site became available in 1988. In April
1988 there were approximately 3700 page views each month. By August 2000 statistics wereencouraging with monthly page views increasing to 48,394 (22,356 user sessions). Over the next
four years the number of page views and visitor sessions grew markedly. In the twelve months
between November 2004 and October 2005, the site received nearly 7 million page views (2.5
million visits). At the time of submitting this paper (November 2005), the site had begun toreceive over 600,000 page views per month, with the highest figure (708,036) in August 2005.
Figure 5 shows the growth in page views and visitor sessions against time.
Developing and maintaining the fish website have had both benefits and drawbacks. It is now
much easier to answer many enquiries, because the enquirer can be directed to the relevant pageon the site. This is becoming increasingly easy as more content is put online. The site also provides a first point of access to collection data. The online data facility is used extensively byIchthyology at the Australian Museum

111

scientists who wish to assess the specimen holdings of particular taxa.
On the down side, the more people who visit the site and thus the more people who becomeaware of the site, the more enquiries the Fish Section receives. The other drawback is the cost interms of money and time. Hosting a large website on a fast, reliable computer system costs
money as does employing staff to maintain and develop the site.
Developing content for the site takes time. The author spends at least one hour most working
days adding content to the site and significantly more time at home in the evenings developing
content.
Other Projects
During recent years, the Fish Section has been involved in a number of external projects.
These include the OZCAM website, the GBIF primary types photography project and the OzFishNet project.
OZCAM Website
The OZCAM (Online Zoological Collections of Australian Museums) website is an initiativeof the Council of Heads of Australian Faunal Collections (CHAFC). OZCAM(http://www.ozcam.gov.au/index.php) is a distributed online query network that allows the querying of a range of different faunal groups from ten Australian institutions (http://www.ozcam.
gov.au/participants.php).
The OZCAM concept was first raised at an Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS)
meeting in the early 1970s. The Australian Museum has been involved in the project since
CHAFC started discussing the idea during the early 1990s. In 1996 a Committee was set up tolook at the feasibility of OZCAM, and in October 1997 CHAFC decided to make OZCAM a reality.
The OZCAM site allows public and club level access (for contributing members). Records
retrieved can be viewed as columnar data or maps. If maps are viewed through the public accesslevel, the latitude and longitude values are ‘fuzzied’, resulting in less precise plotting of dots on
maps. Figure 6 shows an example of a distribution map generated by the OZCAM website using
public level access.

Fig. 6. A sample OZCAM map showing 328 records of old wife, Enoplosus armatus, and 52 records of blue angelfish, Pomacanthus semicirculatus, retrieved from ten fish collections.

112

M. A. McGrouther

The Australian Museum currently serves over 300,000 specimen records through the
OZCAM portal. Faunal groups covered are fishes, insects, reptiles and amphibians, mammals,
birds, spiders, shells, cephalopods and several other groups of marine invertebrates. The Australian Museum also serves specially recorded port survey data on barnacles that assist in tracking introduced species. The museum plans to expand the number of records available to OZCAM
in the near future.
GBIF Type Photography Project
In late 2003 a consortium of Museums from around Australia was awarded funding from the
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to photograph Australian primary type specimens of fishes, mammals, reptiles, birds and molluscs. A total of 6024 Australian Museum typespecimens were photographed, including 1551 fishes. These images were digitally captured overa period of one year using three cameras, a Nikon D100, a Nikon Coolpix 990 (hooked to a television screen) and a Nikon D70 with bellows attachment. The animals photographed ranged insize from only a few millimeters in length to well over one meter. Some very small fishes were
photographed down a binocular microscope. Small fishes were photographed on a copy stand.
Larger fishes were photographed on a specially constructed glass photographic table. The images
were edited to a standard format using Photoshop, and then loaded onto the OZCAM website in
December 2005. They can now available for public access. Examples can be viewed at
http://www.faunanet.gov.au/webservices/images_fish/abudefduf_flavipinnis_l.jpg (Abudefduf
flavipinnis) and http://www.faunanet.gov.au/webservices/images_fish/hoplichthys_haswelli_l.jpg(Hoplichthys haswelli).
OzFishNet
Staff of the major Australian fish collections have joined together to work on selected projects under the name OzFishNet (Fig. 7) (http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/ozfishnet/index.htm).
This collaboration has resulted in the completion of a number of projects that would not havebeen possible if individual institutions worked in isolation. Recent projects include: 1) Descrip-

Fig. 7.

A The OzFishNet website homepage (captured in June 2005).

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum

113

tions of 33 new fish species (17 papers) in a special volume of the Records of the Australian Museum (volume 56, number 2) in July 2004; 2) Two projects investigating the bioregionalisation ofcoastal Australia; 3) An international collaborative biodiversity survey of deepwater areas in the
Tasman Sea (NORFANZ) was carried out in May-June 2003.
A long term goal of OzFishNet is to produce a guide to the estimated 4226 species of fishes
occurring in Australian waters.
Future Plans
For many years the Australian Museum Fish Section has been known for its strong collection
and active research program. The Section fared very well against the ‘Necessary Attributes of aModern Museum’ as stated by Ng (2000). Over the last decade however, the number of researchand technical staff in the Section has declined. This has resulted in a reduction in many aspects ofcollection maintenance and development along with research potential. Future plans for the collection, digital records and website are discussed below.
Collection
Inadequate storage facilities, in terms of quantity and quality, present an ongoing problem formany museums. Currently the fish collection storage areas at the Australian Museum are filled tocapacity. As the collection continues to grow it is becoming increasingly difficult to adequately
maintain it within the current collection space.
By September 2008 a new building will have been constructed at the Australian Museum.
The building is currently being described as ‘the new science building’. It will house most of thescientific sections within the museum that for many years have been scattered in various localities at the College Street site and beyond. The new building will also contain new collection
space that will alleviate some current storage problems and theoretically provide expansion space
for the next twenty years. Importantly, the building will be constructed adjacent to the existingcollection area. This will result in considerably improved access between staff offices and the collection, thereby facilitating significant operational improvements.
The Fish Section will attempt to fill gaps in the knowledge of the fish fauna of New South
Wales, Australia and beyond by the use of targeted collecting trips.* Plotting of collection station
data into ArcView GIS software has helped us to identify many collecting gaps in New South
Wales and beyond. Simply plotting the locations of all collection stations gives a misleading picture of the comprehensiveness of collection coverage. Many stations contain a single lot, often adonation from the public, and thus do not represent a true collection station. Plotting the locationof collection stations that contain twenty or more lots provides a much more useful picture of theextent of intensive collecting for the region. This is clearly shown in Fig. 8, which shows all bottom trawls around Australia (Fig. 8a) and those that contain twenty or more lots (Fig. 8b).
Digital Records
As the number of specimens increases, so too will the number of database records. We aim toenter these new data into the database, but also to enhance existing database records by the inclu* Conducting large scale collecting trips, and more importantly processing the resulting specimens, is becoming increasingly difficult in times of decreasing numbers of support staff and increased regulations governing where and how fishes
can be collected.

114

M. A. McGroutherFig. 8. Bottom trawl collection stations in Australian waters that contain one or more lots (a) and twenty or morelots (b).

Table 8. Codes to indicate the accuracy of specimen identification. These codes are used in most Australian Fish collection databases.
Code
1
2
3
4
5
N

Table 9.

Description
Highly reliable (identified by taxon specialist)
High degree of confidence (identified by trained person)
Identification probably correct
Identification made with limited confidence
Identification superficial only
Not rated (used initially for all database records)

Codes to indicate how latitude and longitude values were obtained.

Code

Data original or subsequently derived

Method by which data obtained

GPS
OCM
OES
CMG
EST
UNK

Original
Original
Original
Subsequent
Subsequent
Unknown

Electronic positioning eg. GPS
Chart, map etc
Estimation or approximation
Chart, map or gazetteer
Estimation/approximation—

sion of additional accuracy codes, citation information and other data that are currently missing.
Most of the major fish collection databases in Australia use a six level specimen identification
accuracy code as shown in Table 8. Two locality codes are also used. Codes that indicate themethod by which latitude and longitude values were obtained are shown in Table 9. Accuracy
codes for latitude and longitude values are shown in Table 10.
By late 2005 or early 2006 the fish databases will have been transferred from KE Texpress to
KE EMu (Electronic Museum) database software. EMu (http://www.kesoftware.com/emu/) is an
integrated collection management system that will bring a number of significant advantages to
the Australian Museum. As well as the standard documentation of specimens, EMu contains
modules for many of the operational procedures of museums such as specimen loans, movements, conservation, valuations, insurance, bibliography etc. It also has a parties module thatrecords information about people and their institutions, as well as an impressive multimedia

Ichthyology at the Australian Museum
Table 10.

115

Codes to indicate the accuracy of the latitude and longitude values.

Code value

Accurate between:

0
1
2
3
4

0 m–1 m
1 m–10 m
10 m–100 m
100 m–1 km
1 km–10 km

56

10 km–100 km
100 km

Remarks
Not used at this time.
Usually not used.
Used for positional information obtained by GPS (excluding trawls).
Used for original data obtained from a chart or map (must have seconds).
Used for coordinates subsequently derived from a gazetteer or atlas. Also
includes coordinates obtained by GPS on short trawls.
Used for imprecise place names and longer trawls.
Used for very poor data such as ‘coast of NSW’.

repository into which can be loaded many different types of files such as images, movies, soundfiles, pdfs, Word and Excel spreadsheets. These all become part of the queryable record.
WebsiteMuseums can relatively easily tap into wider audiences by utilising the World Wide Web. By
using the Web, museums can make a huge contribution to increasing public knowledge and disseminating information about their collection holdings to scientists. To make quality information
available however, there needs to be a commitment to this goal by senior museum managers.
In short, this requires the allocation of appropriate support and resources. In 2004 a Web Content
Committee was established at the Australian Museum to provide a rational evaluation of Web
content proposed by staff. This was an important step towards changing the institutional culture.
The Australian Museum Fish Section will continue to improve its website. Currently collection data are only retrievable by genus, species and subspecies. After data are moved across to
KE EMu, the query facility will be expanded, which will allow users to interrogate the databaseby additional fields.
Currently over 850 species fact sheets are available on the website. Australia’s ichthyofaunacontains at least 4226 species. There is still a huge amount of work required before the site contains a fact sheet on all the commonly encountered species.
There are currently many Web-based opportunities. In May 2005 a species list of the 571
fishes known from Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) was added to the site (http://www.amonline.
net.au/fishes/fishfacts/sydney.htm) and in September 2005 ‘Scorpionfishes of Australia’ wasadded (http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/fishfacts/scorpionfishes.htm). Other possibilities for
future Web projects include a fish forum, a geographical/regional search facility and possibly amore advanced fish identification facility.
Natural history museums are in the unique position of having extensive collections, staff withbiological knowledge and staff with the technical skills to deliver informative and reliable websites. More work is required before museum websites are firmly entrenched in the minds of boththe public and scientists as stable sites that contain informative and reliable information.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Keiichi Matsuura for inviting me to participate in the symposiumand for the opportunity to visit other fish collections in Japan. Thank you also to J. McGroutherfor offering helpful suggestions that improved the paper.

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