Mindat.org
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mindat.org is a non-commercial online mineralogical database, claiming to be the largest mineral database and mineralogical reference website on the internet.
It contains a significant database of minerals, localities and mineral photographs, and is updated constantly by registered users adding and editing entries.
As of March 1, 2006, it includes:
- 27,360 mineral names (this includes mineral varieties, synonyms and discredited names, of which 3,977 are minerals recognised by the International Mineralogical Association.
- 102,737 mineral localities worldwide, with information on 340,221 mineral occurrences within these sites
- 46,649 of the localities have maps and/or grid coordinates available, and the site can use a java globe applet to show the location.
- 44,433 photos of minerals have been uploaded, arranged into galleries from collectors worldwide who wish to share their mineral collections online.
- 3,596 users registered to upload photos and/or edit data.
[edit] History of Mindat.org
Mindat was started in 1993 as a personal database project by Jolyon Ralph. He then developed further versions as a Microsoft Windows application before launching a community-editable database web site in late 2000. [1]. Mindat.org now uses the mediawiki software for its online manual. [2]
