Digital Descriptions & Tools for the Taxonomist

[Richard Pyle]

Zoinks!  I had no idea that my small post would produce such voluminous and
high-quality response (both on the list and off-list) -- but I'm extremely
delighted that it has!  The feedback has not only addressed my original
question extremely well, but has already spawned the same set of discussions
I had hoped to follow up with (copyright issues; "once digitized, always
available"; going beyond simply digitizing media and taking it to the next
step of building tools to make it easily accessible to the entire taxonomic
community; etc...)  I had originally planned to summarize the responses I've
received, but at this point I can barely keep up with the volume of input;
let alone take the time to summarize it in some intelligent way.  For now,
I'll just leave it to the list archives.

I don't want to disrupt the flow of thought, but I do want to throw one
additional point on the table, RE: Copyright, File Sharing, and Web Links.

It occurred to me a while ago that the concept of sharing of digitally
scanned copyrighted publications among scientists matched more or less
precisely the model of sharing digital copyrighted audio (and other) files
that was popularized by Shawn "Napster" Fanning.  In short, the model
enables peer-to-peer sharing of files that are captured and digitized for
personal use, without any commercial involvement or other exchange of money.
Napster didn't distribute the media itself -- it only provided a mechanism
for individuals to expose their personal-copy digitial files to the
internet, and a means for users to search for certain files on other users'
hard drives.  Now, granted, Napster lost its day in court...so this model of
free digital media exchnage may have died with that ruling.  However, when
one considers that original descriptions typically represent a small portion
of the global scientific literature (and with a few important exceptions,
this rule applies down to individual journals as well); and that the
potential financial impact to scientific publishers is enormously less than
the potential financial impact to the recording industry would have been in
the case of Napster; and that whereas the music industry is very clearly
commercial at its core, the cornerstone of science is (philosophically, at
least) ultimately about SHARING information and EXCHANGING ideas (as
elequently addressed by Donat Agosti and Ron Gatrelle)....then perhaps there
just might be a solution to all of these issues (copyright, impermanent
web-links, etc.) by developing a Napster-like model for the exchange of
digitally scanned versions of original descriptions.

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle
Ichthyology, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/pylerichard.html
"The opinions expressed are those of the sender, and not necessarily those
of Bishop Museum."