University of Utah (Red Butte Gardens and Arb. (State Arb. of UT))

The Red Butte Garden and Arboretum will investigate how to integrate a hand-held device that will coordinate with the collections and interpretation databases of the arboretum as well as the educational Web services provided by the museum. A hand-held device was selected because of the mountainous foothill site of the museum, which can cause signal problems in other wireless systems (e.g.,. cell phones). One key to the project is storing the information. Comparisons of the current use of FileMaker Pro and Access with more expensive XML and SQL options will be done to help determine the most flexible and practical method to be used as a starting point in programming development for visitors. Multileveled interpretive materials will then be created for visitors' use. Evaluation will include both the technical issues of storage and flexibility of the data and the effectiveness with users.