The Online Mineral Library at the University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota maintains a world-class mineral collection comprising over 7000 specimens, many of which are museum quality. Prof. Newton H. Winchell started the collection in the 1850s shortly after the founding of the University itself. Many of the specimens come from pioneering mineralogists such as Winchell, George F. Kunz, and Tibor Zoltai. A small fraction of the most eye-catching samples are on public display within the Department of Earth Sciences, but until recently the vast majority of the collection was housed in locked metal cabinets, which meant that the collection received very little use by students and researchers. To improve the visibility and accessibility of our mineral collection we created an elegant, database-driven website (http://mineral.esci.umn.edu/). This dynamic website is one of the more extensive of its kind and allows the collection to be used as a tool for teaching and research. The searchable, online database contains high-resolution photographs of the University's mineral collection and provides access to the complete collection. Administrators can link numerous specimens to create online "collections" that emphasize particular themes, e.g., economic mineralogy, common mineral donors, or common geographic origin. The online database has already been interwoven into courses for Earth Science majors and non-majors. Researchers are able to explore the library for mineral standards for instrument calibration or more involved experimental research. Further, the online library allows graduate students and faculty to "check out" certain mineral specimens for research, which for the first time allows us to accurately track the use of the collection. The electronic framework for the Online Mineral Library was constructed using the Drupal open source content management system. Undergraduate interns are in the process of systematically photographing each of the mineral specimens for inclusion in the Online Library. Additionally, we hope that the online Mineral Library may serve as a centerpiece for a larger effort to build an electronic mineral library that incorporates mineral collections from a multitude of U.S. educational institutions. We hope to invite other educational institutions to incorporate their own mineral collections into the database. In this way, the value and scientific breadth of the Library will continue to grow over time.