A BRIEF REPORT ON THE KARST INDEX DATABASE PROJECT
One of the Australian Speleological Federation's projects is the production of a database of all Australian caves and karst features, and the regular publication of the associated cave details, cave map list, and bibliography. This publication will be known as the Australian Karst Index.
ASF's earlier equivalent was Speleo Handbook (Matthews 1968) and contained references to some 1,700 caves. The new list will contain some 5,000 caves with details being collected by a hundred or so cavers spread around the country.
To ease the volunteer labour workload a computer database is being used to store the data and to produce the published Index. A form has been used to gather the data from club files. The original form was produced in 1974 but an improved 1983 version will now be used.
One of the benefits of having the data stored in a database is that it is very easy to select caves having a particular set of attributes, such as contents, type, location, management classifications, importances, etc, and to list out various other properties of the caves so selected. For example, one could list out the cave number, name and management classification of all caves at Jenolan known to contain bones.
The database will be available to management bodies and researchers as well as to cavers, and will be able to be linked with other specialised databases owned by others, each with their own access security. The database will be accessible to authorised users having a terminal or Telex machine by a local phone call from any Australian capital city and from most other countries. For those without a terminal or Telex a search request can be made through ASF. The database will be located on the commercial time-sharing company, CSA.
Present progress is that the final update of cave forms is about to begin, the database should be available in the 3rd quarter of 1983, and the published list in January, 1984.
Postscript: The publishedAustralian Karst Index 1985 is available from Peter Matthews. It includes a detailed description of the database methodology.