Introduction At the Kobe 2006 general meeting of the IMA, the council endorsed the development of an interactive web-site that presented the "official" IMA list of minerals. Essentially this list contains the names of minerals that have been deemed sufficiently characterized to enable their identification through a variety of methods. At the Cambridge 2007 council meeting, the IMA endorsed this website as representing the "official" IMA list of minerals on the web.

The first draft of this list was provided by the nomenclature commission, from the document 'IMA/CNMNC List of Mineral Names compiled by Ernest H. Nickel & Monte C. Nichols, March 2007'. The continuing integrity of the (web-based) IMA mineral list will be maintained by the IMA outreach committee, and additional features are being developed by the RRUFF™ Project.

Read about the IMA mineral list in Rocks and Minerals (2007, Rakovan).

IMA Outreach Committee: mineral list group
  Bob Downs, chairman
  Marco Pasero
  Marco Ciriotti

Searching

  by mineral name One may quickly navigate to a specific mineral by typing the name into the search field near the top left. As the user types, the list scrolls to the mineral name.

  by tags Minerals are 'tagged' with various attributes important to the gem and mineral community, like which group a mineral belongs to, or if it is used as a gem stone. To search by tags, click "SEARCH TAGS" below the list window. Click a tag once to include, twice to exclude.

  by ideal chemical formula Elements of the ideal chemical formula are also tags. Search by included and/or excluded elements using the provided periodic table. Each time a tag is selected, the list is reduced to the subset that matches the required conditions.

For example, select Sn, and see that the list has been reduced to a subset of approximately 90. Select 'Rock-Forming' from the 'SEARCH TAGS' menu, and view the list of Sn-bearing rock-forming minerals.

Data Export Searching by chemistry or other tags is an effective method of identifying a subset of interest. Click "EXPORT DATA" to download a spreadsheet of the results that match the desired criteria. Click "EXPORT TO RRUFF" to search the RRUFF™ database for spectrographic and diffraction data collected from samples matching any of the listed mineral names.

Viewing Mineral Data Information is listed on the right for the currently selected mineral, including its associated tags. Toggle chemical formulae visible/invisible with checkboxes at the top right.

Use the link bar for quick access to other resources on the mineral. 'Ghosted' links indicate that no such information is available.
Click "HOM" to get a the Handbook of Mineralogy reference in PDF format.
Click "AMCSD" to view crystal structure data from the American Mineralogist Crystal Structure Database.
Click "RRUFF" to see the RRUFF™ database entries.
Click "GOOGLE" to search our PDF libraries, or select to search the entire web.
Click "MINDAT" to view the corresponding mindat.org page.
Click "WEBMIN" to search webmineral.com.
Click "REFERENCES" for a list of references on that mineral. Some available to download courtesy of certain publishers.

List entries are added, modified or removed as frequently as new information becomes available, and mineral 'tags' are updated daily. If you notice an error, please contact: rdowns@arizona.edu

Funding for the development of this site has been provided by The RRUFF™ project, the US National Science Foundation through grant number EAR-0622371, and the Mineralogical Association of Canada.