An official US Federal Taxonomy?

[Everett <D. at <cashatt at MUSEUM.STATE.IL.US>.bitnet>]

Colleagues:

  Many of you may already be aware of the following, but in case
some of you haven't seen this . . . .

The Federal Geographic Data Committee is soliciting comments
on a proposal to develop a  "Biological Nomenclature and Taxonomy
Data Standard."

-----------------------------------------
>From the NGDC Standards Proposal WWW site
>http://www.fgdc.gov/Standards/Status/sub5_8.html
>
>The FGDC is soliciting public comments on the proposal to develop a
>"Biological Nomenclature and Taxonomy Data Standard."  If the proposal
>is approved, the standard will be developed following
>the FGDC standards development and approval process.
>
>
>PROPOSAL SUMMARY:
>
>OBJECTIVES:  To provide a standardized, comprehensive, and
>consistent reference of scientific names (nomenclature) and associated
> classification (taxonomy) for biological species.  This comprehensive
>standard will thus support the coordination, discovery, comparison,
>exchange, organization and integration of biological data among
>different government and non-government agencies, organizations,
>and individuals.
>
>SCOPE:  This standard will focus on providing a standardized
>and consistent reference for scientific names (including scientific
>synonyms and common names) and taxonomy for plant, animal,
>fungal, moneran and protist species.  The standard should be used
>to support the discovery, comparison, exchange, organization and
>integration of any biological data (or related information product)
>that includes scientific names of species (or higher taxonomic
>groups) as part of its data structure.
>
>Comments may be submitted via Internet mail or by submitting an
>electronic copy on diskette.
>
>Send comments via Internet to:
>gdc-taxpro at www.fgdc.gov.  Comments e-mailed as attachments
>must be in ASCII format.
>
>A soft copy version may be submitted on a 3.5 x 3.5 diskette in
>WordPerfect 5.0 or 6.0/6.1 format, along with one hardcopy version
> of the comments, to the FGDC Secretariat (attn: Jennifer Fox) at
>U.S. Geological  Survey, 590 National Center, 12201 Sunrise Valley
> Drive, Reston, Virginia, 20192.
>
>Comments must be received on or before October 15, 1998.
-------------------end material quoted from NGDC Website----------


You can view the entire proposal from the site listed above
or by going directly to
http://www.fgdc.gov/Standards/Documents/Proposals/taxpro.html

The implementaion of this proposal could have numerous
important ramifications (at least in the U.S.).  I think that
taxonomists and systematists of all groups need to be aware of this.

Everett D.(Tim) Cashatt
Everett D. (Tim) Cashatt, Ph.D.
Curator of Zoology
Research and Collection Center
Illinois State Museum
1011 East Ash
Springfield, IL  62703
phone: 217-782-6689
fax:   217-785-2857
email: cashatt at museum.state.il.us