Wednesday, 29 August 2007
3.PS-91
Cenozoic Antarctic DiatomWare/BugCam: An aid for research and teaching
Sherwood Wise Jr.1, Matt Olney1, J. Mitchener Covington2, Shijun Jiang1, Denise K. Kulhanek1, Hans Schrader3, Ted Bibby1, William Falcon1, and David Harwood4. (1) Geological Sciences, Florida State University, Department of Geological Sciences,4100,, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4100, (2) BugWare, Inc., 4027 Bobbin Brook East, Tallahassee, FL 32312, (3) Landrat-Seifert Strasse 4, D-27283 Verden (Aller), Germany, (4) Department of Geosciences, University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 214 Bessey Hall, Lincoln, NE, NE 68588-0340
Cenozoic Antarctic DiatomWare/BugCam© is an interactive, icon-driven digital image database/software package that displays over 500 illustrated Cenozoic Antarctic diatom taxa along with original descriptions (including over 100 generic and 20 family-group descriptions). This digital catalog is designed primarily for use by micropaleontologists working in the field (at sea or on the Antarctic continent) where hard-copy literature resources are limited. This new package will also be useful for classroom/lab teaching as well as for any paleontologists making or refining taxonomic identifications at the microscope. The database (Cenozoic Antarctic DiatomWare) is displayed via a custom software program (BugCam) written in Visual Basic for use on PCs running Windows 95 or later operating systems. BugCam is a flexible image display program that utilizes an intuitive thumbnail "tree" structure for navigation through the database. The data are stored on Micrsosoft EXCEL spread sheets, hence no separate relational database program is necessary.