Are you referring to me saying "ZIMS will be no different"? I actually meant that access to the ISIS applications will be no different - ZIMS will still only be available for use by ISIS members.
ZIMS will be one global, accurate, web-based, real-time animal information management system. It will be accessible anywhere in the world, on any computer with internet access. As records are entered and updated by one institution, these shared records will be available for other ISIS members to share, making real-time global searching of zoological animal information a reality for the first time.
ZIMS will not only replace most of the existing ISIS software, it will also add many additional new features. The zoo and aquarium community is aware of the failings of the current software, and most of these failings have been addressed in ZIMS. In addition, ISIS members have had increasingly long “wish-lists†of functions that have been missing from the current suite of software tools, and again, many of these will be included in the first release of ZIMS. Additional specialized ZIMS modules, such as nutrition and behavioural conditioning are planned for the future.
Several hundred zoo and aquarium professionals have been working collectively over the past five years or so to design ZIMS, and it revolutionise the way zoos and aquariums manage their animals collections, including animal health, inter-institutional transfers, population management and breeding recommendations, collection planning, water and environmental monitoring etc. etc.
Sadly though, for "interested people like us" you'll see very little difference - species-level summary data only. ZIMS is a powerful tool for zoos and aquariums, and there are no plans to make this available to the general public.
