[Taxacom] Periodical and book list

[Donat Agosti]

Would this be an option to ask the BMNH London for a copy of their 'Serial
Publications in the BMNH Library'. These are 3 volumes covering all the
publications which might fall into our domain from 1758 to 1978. It has the
full title plus an acronym for each of it, plus more bibliorphic data.

This seems to be a perfect start?

Donat


 List of 

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roger Hyam
Sent: Wednesday, January 17, 2007 2:19 PM
To: David Remsen
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Periodical and book list


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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>
>
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