Encyclopedia of Chemistry

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.

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]