[Taxacom] Species Pages - purpose

[Doug Yanega]

If we assume that species pages include a summary of all of the 
available literature on a species, the history of its 
taxonomy/nomenclature, the verbatim text of the original 
description(s), a map of its distribution (with links to all online 
museum records of spceimens), etc., then this is far more than a tool 
for casual users; it would make it possible to do the legwork for 
taxonomic revisions in a fraction of the time it does now, because a 
taxonomist seeking the ODs and information on several taxa would no 
longer have to search in dozens of different places, and make an 
actual walk to a physical library. Species pages like that would 
quikly become research tools, and would be better research tools than 
most of us presently have in our collective toolkits. Too much of our 
time as taxonomists is spent re-doing things that someone else has 
already done; by putting that sort of thing online, that duplication 
of effort would drop dramatically.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82