data sharing

[Doug Yanega]

One message from Robin Panza I forgot to follow up:

>Some of us distinguish between computerized and on-line.  I whole-heartedly
>support the computerization efforts past, present, and future, of natural
>history collections.  Most of the curators I know would be only too happy to be
>computerized, but are currently prevented by money and manpower, not fear of
>the uses of the data.  Our own collection is computerized and I use it at
>*least* once a week to provide data to researchers.  It is the putting of that
>data on-line that has some of us concerned.

If, when one applies for a grant to do collection computerization, the
reviews come back and say "We will not approve this unless it is all going
to be put on-line; all of the most competitive proposals before the
committee include easy outside access to the resulting product, so either
you have it or you're in the reject pile", then it is no longer possible to
keep the two issues separate. Unless I'm way out of touch, I think things
are heading this way. I *have*, incidentally, met people who prefer to
avoid databasing because of fear of uses of the data, so it's not just a
hypothetical case.

Peace,

Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG   BRAZIL
phone: 31-499-2579, fax: 31-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
                  http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
  "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
        is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82