BARITE SPECIMEN LOCALITIES

An aid to labeling display quality barite specimens

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Click picture to enlarge. Unless noted all specimens are from Bill & Diana Dameron’s barite suite

LINKS AND SOURCES

	Dongchuan mines, Kunming, Yunnan, China
The most comprehensive mineral/locality web site is http://www.mindat.org/index.php. For checking political subdivisions Wikipedia is also quite useful- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_subnational_entities, although both sites have a few errors since information is provided by contributors who may not be experts on the mineral or locality in question. The Photo Atlas of Minerals version 2.0, a DVD-ROM produced by The Gem and Mineral Council of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, is an excellent resource of technical data with generally accurate locality information and lots of photos. http://www.nhm.org/pam/index.htm The Photographic Guide to Mineral Species is comprehensive CD of all mineral species, with pictures, aimed a little more towards the rare species collector. http://www.excaliburmineral.com/cdintro.htm Books on mineral specimen localities are usually reliable, although many classics are out-of-date and not so useful. Regional books with barite locality data and useful specimen descriptions include: Minerals of the Carpathians, Sándor Szakáll, editor Minerals of Nevada, Castor and Ferdock Minerals of Colorado, Eckel Idaho Minerals, Ream Mineralogy of Arizona, Anthony, Williams, Bideaux, Grant Minerals of Scotland, Livingstone Minerals of Northern England, Symes and Young NEW 2008! Higly recommended. Minerals of Cornwall and Devon, Embrey and Symes The newer general mineral books, such as Minerals and their Localities (Bernard & Hyršl) are quite helpful. Older ones such as Dana, British Mineralogy (Greg & Letsom) or Gem and Crystal Treasures (Bancroft) are not quite as useful given today's market and changes in borders and geographic names. Magazines: the Mineralogical Record, its 25 year printed index, its up-to-date online index, and special issues such as Peru (Vol. 28 #4) are very useful: http://www.mineralogicalrecord.com/ Rocks & Minerals: http://www.rocksandminerals.org/ maintains a complete index to issues in print and one should search out all back issues featuring state locality indexes, a project of Friends of Mineralogy: http://www.friendsofmineralogy.org/ MinDex is a CD by LR Ream Publishing, indexing the above two magazines plus others: http://www.lrream.com/index.html le Règne Minéral (French - regular issues & its hors série #2-'96-Barite) is the best source for French barite locality information: http://www.leregnemineral.fr/ UK Journal of Mines and Minerals (UKJMM) is published more or less annually and often has good barite locality information: http://www.ukjmm.co.uk/backissue.htm Mineral News (black & white, usually about 16 pages) is a montly newsletter with information not found elsewhere on localities and often on rare minerals. http://www.mineralnews.com Lapis (German) and extraLapis English: http://www.mineralien-welt.de/ and http://www.lapisint.com/ . Lapis regular issues in German contain a wealth of data and the extra issues on specific subjects sometimes cover barite: #26/27 on China is very helpful. extraLapis English is a quarterly with high quality photos featuring specific localities and minerals. Other Links There is at least one other barite website, http://www.barite.co.uk/, which has some pictures of interesting different UK barites. John Veevaert (Trinity Minerals) has lots of good information on his site, including links, recommended books, how to clean benitoite/neptunite specimens and other useful tidbits: http://www.trinityminerals.com/index.htm . One good source for finding links is http://www.ukjmm.co.uk/links.htm#. Please consider supporting (by joining) Friends of Mineralogy, either as a national member ($11 annually) or a regional chapter; see www.friendsofmineralogy.org . Other links with good locality or general mineral information will be added here over time.

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