New mineralogical nomenclature and searching?

I will state right up front that I am not in favor of the new naming rules from the IMA. I am curious what is going to happen to databases such as Georef and Mineralogical Abstracts regarding searches conducted for, by example, fluorapatite using apatite - (CaF)? Perhaps the search engines can accommodate all possible permutations of valid and obsolete terminology, but I suspect not. Comments?

Henry Barwood

I will state right up front that I am not in favor of the old naming rules of the IMA. It is probably fortunate that I am not on the comittee that decides these things. George Rossman of Caltech tells me that one of his minerals is the first nano sized mineral to be approved and he has several more for submision. The more the merrier I think in this regard. I think that mineralogy should claim as its domain all solid substances on the earth, and perhaps a few liquid ones as well. Why give most of them away to chemistry and physics? They already get too much money. How restrictive must our definition of a mineral be to put ourselves completely out of business.

Rock

George Rossman's nano-sized mineral is far from the first one in that category, many more such extremely small minerals have already been approved by the IMA-CNMNC, there is even a paragraph on such small-sized minerals in the 1998 procedures and guidelines of the commission.

Ernst and Rock,

I guess a micromount box could be used for the display case for these nano-sized minerals at the next Tucson Mineral Show.


TTFN

To respond to Henry,

Whether we're in favor of them or not, the new names will now the preferred forms, at least in the journals that will strictly enforce the nomenclature. Collectors (and probably some dealers) will use what they see fit, or what is written on the label.

As far as search engines, I suppose aliases could be set up for synonyms so they'd appear in the search of one of the names... It can be done for letters with diacritical marks, aliasing all accented 'e's to be searched as a plain 'e'.