data sharing

[R. Zander]

Hugh Wilson wrote:


> Its also clear that local digital retardation by collections
> managers will be countered by active organizations that are willing
> and able to computerize a valuable resource.  However, if
> self-appointed federal or commercial 'centers' move to 'harvest'
> collections data they will be gathering *dated* data.  If the
> collection is not curated then the harvested product is identical to
> the original.  However,  most collections *are* curated and this
> usually involves nomenclatural updates and error correction.  Thus,
> if curatorial changes are reflected by revision of digital data, then
> those inclined to extract collections data will be using dated data.
> Some ("government work") might be willing to follow this path but
> most users will want a fully updated and corrected set of info.


Dated data is, like all data of this sort now available on the web, undated. Data
that is not archived as saying one thing on a particular date makes for problems in
scientific study. If you cite a particular datum in a paper as
http://web.whatever.edu/bigdataset.html and the datum is changed (corrected, say)
to something else, how is the reader to know if you wrongly cited the datum or not?
Can you imagine a paper in which ALL the data is taken from the web and five years
later is totally unretrievable? With Html ver. 4 and XML we have great web
publishing tools, but the archiving/publishing facilities are not in place.

R. Zander

--


Richard H. Zander, Curator of Botany
Patricia M. Eckel, Research Fellow in Botany
Buffalo Museum of Science
1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA
bryo at paradox.net   voice: 716-896-5200 ext. 351