[Taxacom] how google books is changing academic history: might as well bethe BHL

[Donat Agosti]

Here is a recent O'Reilly Blog

 

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/how-google-books-is-changing-a.htm
l

 

in which history could easily be replaced with natural history - and in fact
should. 

 

 

". things get most interesting when you can compute against this corpus of
books. Computing doesn't just mean measuring or counting (though those
things may also be useful). It may mean reshaping in creative, unexpected
ways."

 

Another grood reason to move as quickly into open access of our taxonomic
publications, and hopefully get the Biodiversity Heritage Library into
marking up not just names but the descriptions of taxa, the single most
important step to allow "computing against this corpus" and finally provide
the most prolific input into Encyclopedia of Live.

 

For example at Plazi as little as 150 publications yield well over 5,000
descriptions and redescriptions of taxa, many of them the only source of
information existing next to the taxon's name.

 

Donat

 

Dr. Donat Agosti

Science Consultant

Research Associate, American Museum of Natural History and Naturmuseum der
Burgergemeinde Bern

Email: agosti at amnh.org

Web:  <http://antbase.org/> http://antbase.org; http://plazi.org
<http://plazi.org/>    

Blog:  <http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/>
http://biodivcontext.blogspot.com/

Skype: agostileu

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