# dots on maps

[Jim Croft]

> But don't forget that you can't validly describe new taxa on the web, so
> only revisions that contain no new taxon names could have maps published
> this way. "On-the-fly" mapping also requires that you have georeferenced
> data, which isn't always an easy thing to get, though we're making some
> advances on this front. Just had a nice workshop in D.C., in fact, that
> could affect a lot of folks here (development of a "Digital Gazetteer" that
> would facilitate georeferencing of natural history data).

A taxon does not have to be named to be mapped - it just has to have a
handle... ;)

But the georeferencing is a very serious issue: all these great ideas
only perform meaningfully if the underlying data is clean and reliable.

Major efforts have been put into developing fancy biological databases
and tools that do all manner of fancy stuff, costing millions of dollars.
This is supported because it is considered to be innovative, exciting and
so on.  But put up your hand and ask for comparable funds to capture and
tidy up legacy data and you get laughed at.  Ironically the tools do not
do much without the data to visualize and display.  Oceanic records of
terestrial species (and probably vice versa), gaps in data, records that
do not plot are are all too common in our databases and only time and
money can fix it up.

Just a plea to remember that a plottted map depends on and is only as
good as the underlying data.

jim