[Taxacom] ZooBank reality check

[B.J.Tindall]

Paul,
Wouldn't it be nice to take it all further? Sorting out synonyms, getting
rid of useless names, establishing those names which are useful for the
present and future, peer reviewing original literature, clearly designating
types and their location (making sure they are available to working
taxonomists), providing dynamic links to the original literature as it
becomes available online, these providing links to other databases, such a
GenBank/EMBL/DDJB..... Sounds a bit like the system which bacteriology has
been quietly developing for the past 40 years, without too many bells and
whistles. Virology has quietly followed suit.
Brian

At 23:31 06.09.06 +0100, Paul Kirk wrote:
>I agree with Bobs assessment that some of the comments thus far have been
slightly unfair and definitely misguided. Perhaps more could have been done
to road test the dataset before the vehicle was launched .. or perhaps some
detailed explanation of it's limitations provided.
> 
>What I would like to pick up on is the 'working taxonomist' continuing to
take the trouble to check the original literature. This somewhat 'sterile'
but often justified exercise would have been reduced in botany if NCU's had
been accepted, at least as far as uncertainty over reference details was
concerened, amongst other things. But who has access to ALL the relevant
original literature ... outside north america and western europe? Working
taxonomists in much of the rest of the world do not have these luxuries so
one of the 'other enterprises' Bob referred to must be digitizing - just
photographing and NOT in the first instance OCR'ing, parsing, XML'ing etc -
the critical literature for each speciality group to create virual
Libraries for our colleagues in Africa, South America, eastern Europe, Asia
... And the linking of these images of validating protologues to the names
in the relevant nomenclators - free to all.
> 
>And the proof of how easy it is can be found in the world of Mycology for
in a little under two years with just two 'drivers' and a couple of dozen
collaborators we have almost 80,000 page images available with 11,300 of
these relating to an admitedily small proportion of the 380,000 names in
the Index Fungorum database. So you search for your name, click on a link
and read the original description, see the illustrations and find out where
the type is. This is not rocket science, doesn't have nice brand images but
it is all free to the end user. If I hadn't been typing this email I could
have scanned a couple of dozen more pages it's that easy. Perhaps Thompson
could influence some of the on-line but 'closed' image repositories to
release into the public domain the relevant page images of this primary
systematic literature?
> 
>Paul
> 
>Dr Paul M. Kirk
>Biosystematist
>CABI UK Centre (Egham)
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>________________________________
>
>From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Bob Mesibov
>Sent: Wed 06/09/2006 22:46
>To: TAXACOM
>Subject: [Taxacom] ZooBank reality check [ Scanned for viruses ]
>
>
>
>Interesting that other ZooBank testers haven't had the (so far) satisfactory
>results I've had with taxon names per se. Another question is lurking here,
>though: who will use ZooBank as an all-purpose name reference, and why?
>
>I'd personally like to believe that working taxonomists will continue to
>take the trouble to check the original literature in their specialty group.
>They will only go to compilations prepared by the painstaking nit-pickers
>who preceded them in their specialty, and even then will be skeptical.
>"Taxonomic librarians" compiling vast databases of nomenclatural information
>cannot be expected to do this, whether they work for Thomson or the uBio
>effort or any other enetrprise.
>
>The original "prospectus" for ZooBank argued that we needed a name registry
>for _current_ taxonomic effort. We also (in zoology) need an online Neave,
>simply so that we can try to avoid homonymy.
>
>The idea that ZooBank would be an authoritative source for _past_ taxonomy
>was something for the future, yet this seems to be what some site visitors
>are expecting _now_, which is not only unfair, but misguided.
>---
>Dr Robert Mesibov
>Honorary Research Associate, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
>and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
>Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
>(03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
>
>Tasmanian Multipedes
>http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/zoology/multipedes/mulintro.html
>Spatial data basics for Tasmania
>http://www.utas.edu.au/spatial/locations/index.html
>---
>
>
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