Collection Computerization in the Division of Birds, Field Museum of Natural History

菲尔德自然历史博物馆鸟类部保存的研究收藏品占世界鸟类标本材料的很大一部分。这些藏品在物种代表性方面的范围(皮肤收藏占世界物种的80%，骨骼收藏占20%，腌制收藏占15%)，大多数标本的新近和极好的策展状态使菲尔德博物馆的藏品成为进化生物学家的首选资源。随着人类活动给世界鸟类带来的变化(无论是在分布上还是在绝对数量上)，以及获得进一步收集的许可的难度越来越大，博物馆标本的价值是无法估量的。为了更好地保护收集，并使科学界更容易获得有关收集的信息，该项目将开始收集数据的计算机化。电脑化将提高工作人员回答收集询问的能力，将大大改善来访专业人员和其他潜在用户获取收集信息的机会，使工作人员能够确定哪些地理区域和哪些分类群在收集中的代表性较差，并将通过使工作人员能够随时知道每个标本应放在哪里来提高收集的安全性。

The research collections maintained by the Division of Birds at the Field Museum of Natural History represent a significant portion of the world's avian specimen material. The scope of the collections in terms of species representation (80% of the world's species in the skin collection, 20 % in the skeletal collection and 15% in the pickled collection), the recency of the majority of the specimens and the superb state of curation make the collections at the Field Museum a premier resource for evolutionary biologists. With the changes in the world's avifauna (both in distribution and absolute numbers) brought about by man's activities and the increasing difficulty in obtaining permits for further collecting, the value of the Museum's specimens is incalculable. To protect the collection better and make information about it more accessible to the scientific community, this project will start computerization of the collection data. Computerization will improve the staff's ability to answer collection inquiries, will vastly improve access to collection information for visiting professionals and other potential users, will allow the staff to determine what geographic areas and what taxa are poorly represented in the collection, and will increase collection security by enabling the staff to know at all times where each specimen should be located.