[Taxacom] Wikispecies is not a database

[Jason Mate]

Roderic Page wrote:
> 
> > A very telling remark was made by an (actually the only)  
> > undergraduate at a recent small working group crustacean  
> > taxonomists. After hearing us thinking about and muttering about  
> > beginning to tackle digitizing access to the literature, he said  
> > (paraphrasing): "You folks should realize the importance of the  
> > decision you're making here. If you don't get the literature online,  
> > no one in my generation will go into this science. We aren't going  
> > to spend the better part of a Master's and Ph.D. program amassing  
> > the paper literature for a group. We'll just do some other kind of  
> > biology."

I feel for your student. I would be happy if I could get my literature online (at least the more recent stuff) without having to pay an arm and a leg for it. Can we at least aim to have open-access descriptions? It would make the task of non-tenured taxonomists (not parataxonomists, amateurs or other tags) much easier.

Best,

Jason

_________________________________________________________________
More than messages–check out the rest of the Windows Live™.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowslive/