The South Australian Museum at Adelaide established an Information Centre in 1964 in order properly to handle questions from the public and requests for identification of specimens. The Centre currently deals with some 11,000 inquires a year, some of whom have over fifty specimens or questions. A further 10,000 people simply visit the Centre to look at the displays of live animals, natural history specimens and resource library. Two Information Officers deal with these inquires on weekdays and on weekends specimens and questions are left with attendants on duty in the display galleries and are processed by information staff immediately on Mondays. This article is not so much concerned with the unique service provided by the Information Centre, but the way in which data associated with specimens and people is recorded and used.