An open, static mineral encyclopedia — every IMA-approved species with real chemistry, properties and photographs, free to read and free to reuse.
Mineralogist.org is a plain-language encyclopedia of minerals. The catalogue is built on the IMA/RRUFF master species list — over 5,800 officially recognized mineral species — enriched with curated data (hardness, colors, lookalikes) for the common and collectible species, and full written articles for the most-looked-up minerals.
There are three kinds of entry: index entries (official IMA data — formula, crystal system, structural group, space group, status), enriched entries (which add reviewed properties like Mohs hardness, color, streak and synonyms), and full articles (which add prose, localities, uses and identification notes, each with references and a review date).
Content is published under CC BY-SA 4.0 unless noted. For a specific mineral page:
Mineralogist.org (2026). “<Mineral name>.” The Open Mineral Encyclopedia.
Available at https://www.mineralogist.org/m/<id>. Accessed <date>.
Please also credit the photo author and license shown beneath each image when reusing photographs — those carry their own terms (mostly CC BY-SA or public domain via Wikimedia Commons).
This is a static website — there are no cookies, no trackers, no analytics, no accounts, and no server-side processing of anything you type. Search runs entirely in your browser against a public data file — nothing is sent to or stored by this site.
We aim for WCAG-friendly pages: semantic landmarks, alt text on photographs, visible focus states, keyboard-navigable menus, and prefers-reduced-motion support. If you hit a barrier, tell us — it’s a bug, and we’ll fix it.
Corrections, contributions, and questions: hello@mineralogist.org. To submit a specimen photo or propose a new full entry, see Contribute.