a grandiose but (hopefully) practical idea

[Jim Croft]

>Hi, all. A few of you may recall a request I issued some time ago, about
>anyone who might have taxonomic authority file databases (hierarchical
>listings of higher taxon names, in particular) they could share.

nope... but everybody wants such a thing...

>Why is there no website or network established where taxonomists and
>museum scientists can trade authority file databases?

Good question...  but their is a biodiversity authority file listserv
though... it has been very quiet of late...

>There are certainly various and sundry websites that have checklists,
>catalogs, searchable databases, phylogenies, and so forth, and these are
>incredibly helpful, but I don't know of ANY (at least not for insects) that
>offer database files that users can download and import directly into their
>personal or institutional databases.

Some of our databases offer a comma delimited (.csv) option that can be
loaded into Excel/Access or whatever, if you really must...  The
International Plant Name index and the Harvard Gray Card Index so the same
thing...

>  I suggest that it's long past time to
>remedy this, and (here's the amusing part of it) one of my inspirations for
>this is the "Napster Online Community" - a model of data sharing that WORKS
>(or worked, as the case may be). We could do essentially the same thing
>with authority files as Napster does with songs, even without a central
>organizing entity.

The reason Napster works, apart from the universal unabashed passion for a
freebie, is the fact that they have a universally agreed transfer format
that all their clients know about and can use, in one way or another: MP3

There is no equivalent in the taxonomic and nomenclatural community,
although there have been some attempts at trying to define what such a
standard might look like.

If we could come up with a standard that all our applications could deliver
and accept, we would be in business... and then there is the issue of the
differences between the bot and zoo codes and ways of doing
business...  scary place... don't want to do there...

>if ONE
>person has already created a hierarchical database of all the bee genera of
>the world (see below), then NO ONE should ever have to perform the same
>task again.

They would not *have* to do it, but my money says they will do it anyway...  :)

>I have a suspicion that someone in the crowd (like Peter Rauch) is about to
>holler "But what about Zbig and other models of decentralized data
>sharing?"

I don't like Zbig, not because the idea is flawed, but because it is based
on Z39.50, and none of my applications can use it...  now, if they were to
go down the XML route, we could upgrade browsers and start to party...

>  - to which I'd respond as follows: if I am, say, some forest
>service worker in Thailand, and what I'm doing is sitting and typing the
>name of some spider off a visiting expert's ID label into my Excel
>speadsheet on my office computer, how far away in the future is it before
>I'll have some *free* software that links to Excel,

Thinking software is a destructive waste of time for the taxonomic
community and should be avoided at all costs - every biologist who becomes
a programmer is a tragedy - there are so few of the former out there and so
many of the latter... we should be thinking open systems, and data
standards and conventions to allow us to exchange the data we have so
labouriously won with standard application we can buy off the shelf...  ok,
it is alright to dream isn't it?

>  recognizes that what
>I'm typing in is a spider genus name, does a search of all the online
>authority files until it gets a match, retrieves all the taxonomic
>hierarchy & authority data, and feeds it seamlessly into the empty fields
>in my Excel speadsheet, all *automatically*?

Every data set sitting in Excel/Access is also a tragedy...  compile it
there by all mean is you must, but get it out as soon as you can...

>If
>we've got databases NOW, we should start trading NOW, even if our databases
>are incomplete.

In order to trade, both parties must have a commodity that the other party
wants... currency was invented for this purpose...  a flat file of
unstructured, undefined, non-standard data is not much use to
anyone...  build it according to a commonly accepted schema and we can
start to talk business...

>I suppose that since I'm the one spouting off, I should make some effort to
>start the proverbial ball rolling, but one of the things that might be most
>useful is something I'm not equipped to do properly: start a new mailing
>list, so those of us interested in this can discuss it as a group without
>bothering everyone else.

You do not have to start one - it already exists...  bio-auth-l  or
something like that...  it has been so long since it has had any traffic I
have forgotten the address...

>  That aside, I can at least offer my own database
>efforts as available for trade; I presently have a listing in FileMaker Pro

got a schema to go with it?

>If anyone has similar databases they're willing to swap, or ideas for
>starting a mailing list (or website, or even - hope of all hopes - an
>actual Napster-like online linked community), contact me and we can discuss
>details.

There are a lot of people already talking about this, but there is not all
that much communication going on...  The TDWG community would be a good
place to stick you oar in...

>I may be opening a can of worms, but it beats wallowing in despair.

Despair and worms go well together... unfortunately they are not mutually
exclusive...  :)

>Doesn't the concept of a "win-win scenario" ever cross people's minds
>anymore?

yep... I often have despair with my cans of worms...  *and* vice versa... :)

jim