Katydid CD ROM --

Wed Jul 14 15:24:51 CDT 1999

There is a very fundamental issue which is touched on in Jim's comments but
not fully explored...

There are  enormous disparities in wealth between the "North" & the "South"
(which are everywhere apparent in the "South")  -- one simple demonstration
is to graph some national economic measure (like national GDP) with some
indicator of national IT development  (for example, national distribution
of "Internet host sites");  the curves are very largely coincidental.  Then
plotting some national measure of "biodiversity" elucidates the obvious
that many of the areas of greatest concern (from a biodiversity
conservation standpoint) are least well served by IT.

Visit a university or other library in the develkoping world...
I have been told that Pakistan (as one example) had 1 university at the
time of partition with India and that 19 new universities have been created
since 1949.  (I visited one of these in Peshawar a few years ago and was
amazed by the absence of core science materials.)  I have frequently been
asked by developing world scientists to provide information on how to
publish in existing ("mainstream") journals (which they don't routinely
see) or to provide any possible assistance in acquiring materials.  Even
when established scientists in the South adaptively acquire some of the
literature they need, younger scientists, teachers, students often can not
get access at all...

What has this to do with distribution & pricing of CD-ROM's?

Whatever formats and means of distribution we use for scientific
information,  we should insure that we offer fair access to those who
currently are virtually disinherited. This may mean that we must offer free
access  or perhaps explore options like selective "IP" controls on access
or the "circulation" (check out and return) of electronic documents.
Pricing of any sort may place these products beyond reach.

Design of CD's should also explore options like language interfaces and
"filters" which make the same "product"  accessible to different reader
levels...

(And efforts to extend the *saturation* of Internet access in the
developing world are essential i.e. the Internet *reaches* most countries
but effective access is sharply limited.)

None of this is to say that "cost recovery" is not justifiable but only to
assert that it is in everyone's best (utilitarian) interest to support the
"development" of science internationally and to "level the playing field".
Most of our institutions recognize a "granting function" (pro bono civico)
as part of our missions and the international (and for that matter
domestic-educational) extension of access to those who don't have it is a
way of meeting those obligations...

Tom Moritz
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Tom Moritz                                              212-769-5417
Director of the Library                                 212-769-5009 - FAX
American Museum of Natural History               tmoritz at amnh.org
79th St. @ Central Park West               http://nimidi.amnh.org/library.html
New York, New York  10024                       (Time:  GMT -5)
USA
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At 10:08 AM 7/14/99 -0700, James Beach wrote:
>Hello All --
>
>First, congratulations and laurels to Piotr, Dan and Chris for their
>immense investment in database development and distribution of their
>species information.  ETI is also doing a stupendous job, though it looks
>like their cost-recovery schedule is a bit steeper in that they charge more
>for their CD-ROMS.  NSF (and agency other) subsidies help US efforts.  I
>was working at the NSF and was the person who supplemented the Otte award
>beyond the original request, in the amount of about $50,000 (if I recall
>the amount correctly) to encourage the PIs to further develop their on-line
>resources.  They did that and as pointed out the OSF is a high-quality,
>maintained and freely available resource.
>
>It seems like we have debated distribution media, specifically net versus
>CD-ROM, in the past in various ways. Let's all agree that both have their
>advantages as distribution media, and one may be more effective than the
>other depending on the situation (mostly revolving around the bandwidth to
>the target user).  No big deal if you consider just the distribution aspects.
>
>But what is a big deal is the opportunities provided by networked databases
>including the possibilities for online, real time integration of species
>and specimen information not only within systematics but also among
>different disciplines.  Network bandwidth in the developed countries is
>still on a steep incline and the broader earth systems science community,
>(to include all of ecology, remote sensing, etc.) are developing
>architectures to do real-time integration, visualization, analysis and
>predictive modeling of species and specimen information.
>
>The systematics community still lacks adequate standards, software
>infrastructure and technologists to move rapidly in this area, but I would
>urge that the absence of such integration and compatibility standards
>should not lower our sights to shoot for independent, technologically
>isolated database systems as our ultimate target.   The potential payoffs
>for systematics research and for society are orders of magnitude greater
>for distributed database systems which interoperate (even through
>relatively simple, standard query interfaces) than they are for stand-alone
>information resources.  That is very clear if one looks at what is
>happening with database systems in the molecular and structural biology
>communities and also with what the secondary publishing industry (BIOSIS,
>ISI, High Wire, Elsevier, and other science publishers, abstracters and
>indexers) is doing to integrate different *kinds* of publication data from
>different sources into a common product.  The unstoppable trend is data
>integration across levels of biological organization, publication, and
>human activity (research and environmental management, teaching, etc.).
>
>It's going to be a very exciting future for systematics and for collections
>based research if we can build the standards infrastructure and devote more
>of our precious technologists to the task of bringing species and specimen
>data, information and knowledge in interoperating systems on the Internet.
>
>
>Jim B.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>At 7/13/1999 08:51 PM -0400, you wrote:
>>A few more comments and a clarification concerning our CD ROM.
>>
>>Margaret K. Thayer wrote:
>>
>>>Producing and selling it as a book would be astronomically more expensive,
>>>as you know, and not electronically searchable, either.
>>This is absolutely true, a book, even with a fraction of the
>>illustrations included on the CD would be prohibitively expensive, not to
>>mention that no sane publisher would agree to publish such a monster.
>>
>>>Unless there's
>>>been a change, the info is also available free on the web (but requires a
>>>connection to use it).
>>No change there, the Orthoptera Species File Online is still available
>>for free (and always will be). Actually, there are some major
>>improvements and additions on the horizon. Recently we also added a
>>database of recent (and not so recent) publications on Orthoptera,
>>accessible from the Orthopterists' Society web site.
>>
>>>From Piotr's response, it sounds as if it was not
>>>subsidized by, say, USDA or other institutions or agencies.
>>A major clarification here - creation of this CD in its current format
>>was made possible largely by support from the National Science Foundation
>>(as a part of a grant to Dan Otte and Piotr Naskrecki to study phylogeny
>>of Tettigonioidea). However, we started this project long before we had
>>any support and our personal investment had been substantial. Practically
>>all images taken before July 1997 (nearly 50% of all images) and most of
>>the taxonomic portion of the catalog had been assembled before we
>>received the grant.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Piotr Naskrecki
>>
>>--------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>Piotr Naskrecki
>>Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
>>University of Connecticut, Storrs CT 06269, USA
>>
>>e-mail: pin93001 at uconnvm.uconn.edu
>>
>>An Illustrated Catalog of Orthoptera (http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/cd) -
>>a database of the Orthoptera of the World on a CD ROM
>>
>>Orthoptera Species File Online (http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/Orthoptera)
>>- a database of the Orthoptera of the World Online
>>
>>Katydids of La Selva Biological Station Costa Rica
>>(http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/interkey/titlepg)
>>
>>Taxonomy and Collection Manager software
>>(http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/interkey/database.html)
>
>
>____________________________________________________
>
>James H. Beach
>Specify Software Project
>www.usobi.org/specify
>Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center
>Dyche Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045
>E-mail: jbeach at ukans.edu
>Tel: (785) 864-4400, Fax: (785) 864-5010