WEB-BASED INTERACTIVE IDENTIFICATION USING NAVIKEY AND POLLYCLAVE

General Symposium on Interactive Identification Systems	Michael Bartley Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge MA 02138 U.S.A.
	Timothy Dickinson Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Biology Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto CANADA M5S 2C6

Our contrasting approaches to web-based interactive identification both use DELTA databases. NaviKey (http://www.herbaria.harvard.edu/software/navikey/) is a Java application with a DELTA object model, whereas PollyClave (http://prod.library.utoronto.ca/polyclave/) is a CGI program written in ANSI C. With NaviKey a customizable Java applet is embedded in a web page. The applet either downloads the DELTA database for local identification or communicates through http calls to a NaviKey DELTA object server. With PollyClave the database resides on the server and is queried in an exchange of forms between the user and the server. PollyClave enables the user to consult character illustrations, and both programs provide taxon illustrations for comparing specimens.