EoN Systems, S.A.

"Next Wave Technology"

ICONS Software

ICONS is an easy-to-learn software program designed to support community-based conservation, biodiversity information management and networking.

ICONS provides modules for managing conservation-related information for the following categories:

	Organizations
	Persons
	Peoples
	Sources (bibliographies; metadatabases; etc.)
	Laws
	Projects and Events
	Internet Sites and Services
	Geographic Areas
	Species
	Data Custodians
	Metadata
	Multimedia Encyclopedia

In addition, ICONS provides you with a number of lookup tables that contain terms used in the other modules which you can use to create authority files, including tables for:

	Acronyms
	Countries
	Geographic keywords
	Keywords
	Habitats
	Taxonomic Ranks

ICONS is effective for managing bibliographies, email and personal notes; organization and expertise data; detailed project histories; legal information, species life history data and their uses; and for the other categories listed above.

ICONS makes extensive use of transactions, which allows you to create new categories of information and attach them to records in your database: data values, cross-classifications, notes and binary objects such as word-processed files, graphics, map files, and sound files. You can perform full-text searches, and the system comes with tools that will help you to index, filter and sort your records.

Within the flexible structure for adding your own classifications and data, ICONS provides a fixed underlying data structure that allows users adopting the software to easily share files, either through diskettes, zip disks or other storage media, or by using the Internet. Data entered into ICONS may also be exported in a number of common formats to be shared with other programs, and the tables containing the data are left accessible for easy attachment or export.

ICONS can be used:

	to assemble and electronically store the materials related to meetings, with the full text of the materials, scanned images, and a participant's list; which can be distributed at a meeting to provide a basis for further networking;
	to manage membership lists; track office activities; organize information on projects; and other daily tasks in conservation organizations;
	by conservation organizations to maintain conservation networks with contact and expertise information, a document clearinghouse, project information, and detailed legal and biological information on particular issues and regions;
	by students or professionals to manage research and education-related information and distributed in the classroom;
	to provide a database system that can be used to store information that can be used in geographic information analysis (GIS)

The system is being developed for use in a number of indigenous knowledge, sustainable development and biodiversity initiatives with IUCN - The World Conservation Union and others. We are making the software freely available over the Internet in order to invite others to evaluate ICONS and help us improve it, and to provide a tool that can be used in conservation and sustainable development efforts.

ICONS comes with a small sample database to provide some authority information and help guide you to some useful formats for entering data. We have also prepared a database of over 100,000 records on bibliographic references, organizations, Internet sites, acronyms, encyclopedic terms and species on the issues of biodiversity, indigenous knowledge, community-based conservation, conservation biology and sustainable development. We will make the database available for low-cost distribution on CD-ROM and as a searchable database on the Internet. Our ultimate intention is to foster the development of federations of organizations that maintain locally controlled, high quality information sources in special-interest networks.

A run-time version of Access 2.0 is installed so you can use ICONS on any personal computer running a Windows 3.1 or higher operating system. If you have a full copy of Access and other tools, you can mount ICONS on a local area network (LAN) or on an Internet server. We have also designed ICONS to allow users with the full version of Access to modify ICONS for their own use, such as constructing a user interface in a local language. ICONS is fully compatible with GIS software capable of accessing the ICONS data tables, and we are currently developing direct interfaces to GIS. This version will also run under Windows 95, and a following version written for Windows 95 and incorporating advanced Internet features is being developed.

The software is accompanied by a manual with basic instructions on installation and use. This is a Beta release, and we do not yet have on-line help, but we are developing an integrated help system for the full release version. The installation package is 5.1 Mb, and will require at least 11 Mb of hard disk space to install, and requires a 386-or-higher PC running Windows 3.1 or greater operating system.

ICONS is copyrighted for free educational and non-profit use.

	Kevin Grose, Project Manager, Head, Information Management Group, IUCN
	Julian Inglis, Project Coordinator
	Bill Harp, System Co-Designer
	Preston Hardison, System Co-Designer

Contact Preston Hardison at: prestonh@comcast.net
for more information about ICONS.  

We will have a downloadable version of ICONS here in the near future.

.

Contact Information:

EoN Systems, S.A.
info@trail2.com

Graphics below may be freely used for educational, personal or other non-commercial use provided that the source is explicitly acknowledged. .

(c) Copyright 2002,
EoN Systems, S.A.
 All Rights Reserved

Watch the site for new additional high quality educational graphics in the near future

3900 x 5700 pixels - 4.5 mb

Darién, Panama - Cultural and Physical Geography, 2002 from 1:250,000 scale sources.