ABSTRACT
Over recent years, several initiatives on improving access to information in natural science collections have been supported by the European Commission of the European Union. All are founded on the principle that the databases containing this information are scattered across numerous individual sites and servers, making the task one of constructing an integrated yet notably distributed network. This paper summarizes the history of this evolving exercise and examines its progress. Several issues are considered: the core task of connecting databases to the network is deeply influenced by the construction of the user interface; linking databases that are not entirely uniform in structure creates technical demands. No less demanding are problems of user access and the control of data quality.
