Mindat - the future of mineral information publishing

A brief history of mineral information publishing

The Printing Press
~1450

The Printing Press
Invented by Gutenberg
~ 1450
Information could be distributed cheaper than ever before

Mineral Books
Books on minerals and mining followed
1556 De Re Metallica first book on mining

Partwork Publications
James Sowerby, British Mineralogy 1802-1817

Mineral Magazines
Rocks and Minerals magazine published since 1926
Now many other regular mineral magazines

The World Wide Web
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 1993

mindat.org
October 2000

Advantages of Online
Free to access
Available on computer, tablet, phone
Updated every day
100x more data than magazines
Easily searchable

Advantages of Print
Paid for content
Do not need internet
More detailed and comprehensive articles
Long-term storage
Physical items more desirable

Both Print & Web can die

Co-operation
Out of print issues available online
Short articles online, deeper versions in print
Online indexes of articles in different magazines
Electronic download (paid) of recent issues

mindat.org and magazines
Live show reports
Video
Encourage more new article authors
Build an index of ALL mineral magazine articles
Conferences such as this

Other New Developments
Mindat.org is now a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit
Directory of mineral shows
Ultra-high resolution images
New Chemical Elements section

And finally…
1st Mindat Conference (2011) - Poland
2nd Mindat Conference (2012) - Morocco
3rd Mindat Conference (2014) - Madagascar
4th Mindat Conference (2016) - ??????

And finally…