[Taxacom] Periodical and book list

[Roger Hyam]

Hi David,

It was thinking about the BHL metadata that got me started. Things to  
stress:
- Open and downloadable in its entirety from the start. A data set  
not 'just' a service.
- Not based on a big project approach. It could contain all the in- 
copyright things that BHL may not address.
- Collaborative. Built by people from more than one project. (BHL,  
uBio, EoL, EDIT etc would contribute and consume).

I am thinking of this as a model for shared data. Would people  
contributed to something as freely distributable as this?

By all means cross post.

Roger



On 17 Jan 2007, at 13:03, David Remsen wrote:

> Roger,  I've heard this topic brought up a couple of times in the  
> last 18 months in a number of different contexts and have started  
> pursuing it once or twice.  Most recently this has been a subject  
> of interest for the Biodiversity Heritage Library consortium.   We  
> looked into it last year when we were parsing Index Animalium in  
> order to try to reconcile the record citation to the journal  
> index.  I've run into such a need elsewhere.   For example, the  
> original citation for a name, referenced in 4 different taxonomic  
> catalogs, is formatted 4 different ways.   A service that would let  
> me pass the citation as input and would parse it and return it  
> linked to a canonical journal reference would be really powerful.
>
> I actually started to compile lists of databases that appear to  
> carry abbreviations for various scientific domains that overlap  
> biology.  I was going to try to make a SOAP service akin to the  
> Author Abbreviation resolver SOAP service we built for similar  
> problems concerning cited authorship.
>
> My understanding is that such there are commercial organizations  
> that hold some of this stuff.  Do you mind if I cross post this to  
> the BHL and maybe another Bio library group and see what might come  
> out?  Id certainly support the development of it.  Maybe the BHL  
> would too.
>
> - David
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ------
> David Remsen (dremsen at gbif.org)
> Senior Programme Officer
> Electronic Catalog of Names of Known Organisms
> Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat
> Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
> Tel: +45-35321472   Fax: +45-35321480
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ------
>
>
> On Jan 17, 2007, at 1:41 PM, Roger Hyam wrote:
>
>> I am interested in conducting a social experiment.
>>
>> It would be very useful when combining taxonomic data from multiple
>> databases if there were  globally unique identifiers for major
>> taxonomic publications (periodicals/serials and books). One could
>> then supplement a reference citation like
>>
>> Edinb.J. Bot. 47(2): 89-200 (1990)
>>
>> with an LSID and/or a URL that will tell the user that
>>
>> Edinb. J. Bot. is the Edinburgh Journal of Botany published by HMSO
>> in Edinburgh. It may also give other alias' it is known by and a note
>> might say that it is a continuation of Notes from the Royal Botanic
>> Garden Edinburgh.
>>
>> It would enable the user to merge the data with people who have used
>> other abbreviations for the same publication title - possibly without
>> human interaction.
>>
>> Lookup services could be created that went from abbreviation to full
>> journal title.
>>
>> The trouble is that the major lists of publications (e.g. BPH, TL2
>> etc) are either:
>>
>> -  are not available electronically.
>> -  are available on a subscription basis.
>> -  are hopelessly out of date.
>> -  can not be added to instantly (if the one you want to use isn't
>> cited).
>> -  are not freely distributable (i.e. you can't download the whole
>> lot and use them as a lookup table in your database or re-distribute
>> them as part of a product or archive them to keep you data safe)
>>
>> I am thinking that this is an ideal test case to see if the
>> 'community' could build a freely distributable list that helps us
>> all. The list would:
>>
>> - only include 'top level' publications i.e. periodicals, books,
>> multi volume works. It is assumed that it is relatively easy to
>> unambiguously identify a location within such publications via
>> volume, part, and page/plate numbers.
>> - contain a simple set of fields for each publication.
>> - would be entirely freely distributable. i.e. a complete copy could
>> be downloaded under a LGPL or creative commons type license.
>> - contributors would be acknowledged in a contributors list, but
>> nothing more.
>> - users could comment on entries and submit new entries in real time.
>> - would be a key into/integrate with current and future digitization
>> efforts.
>>
>> I have three questions:
>>
>> 1) Has it already been done?
>>
>> 2) If this system were available now and populated with the majority
>> of publications would you use it? Would it be useful?
>>
>> 3) Do you (or some one you know) have a database containing details
>> of titles of periodicals or books that you could export data from as
>> a contribution to seed the list? If so how many records would there
>> be and what subject areas (within biodiversity studies) would they
>> cover?
>>
>> You can mail me off list if you don't want to commit to anything in
>> front of everyone.
>>
>> This is still a thought experiment at the moment. I'll mail a high
>> level summary of replies I get back to the list.
>>
>> All the best,
>>
>> Roger Hyam
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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