Australian herbaria are the most advanced in the development of cross-institutional standards. It is hoped that Australian museums will soon begin to develop a comparable set of multidisciplinary standards for the interchange of data about museum specimens. Web access to natural sciences collections documentation is varied. Many departments maintain web pages that provide general information about the composition of the collections, staff and current research projects. Very few sites allow direct access to collection databases and where they do content is directed primarily at scientists rather than the general public.
Some sites are purpose-built to be of general interest to lay people.
Many projects around Australia aim to utilise the wealth of information in specimen-based collection documentation for wider applications. Terrestrial biologists who work with well-described flora and fauna are interested in linking specimen records with distributional information. Their aims are to map the ranges of species, evaluate species' conservation status and to provide advice on resources management to governments. Some disciplines, notably fish scientists, cooperate as an Australia-wide community to achieve the development of standards and coding in documentation of fish collections and the development of a nationwide fish website. At a governmental level, attempts are being made to synthesise information about datasets held by institutions such as museums and herbaria.