[Taxacom] RSS feeds for new (or newly digitised) names

[faunaplan at aol.com]

 Wouldn't the task of creating better access to biodiversity information be much easier if we had the following work steps:

- a master index of all publications with DOIs and - on my wishlist - also with human-readable unique handles (e.g., 'Smith, A. & Jones, B. 1900a'). 

- a master index of all available nomina, urgently needed to work through the fast growing mess of misspellings, phantom names, and homonymies. 

- default classifications (checklists) where we could resolve the subjective synonymy of nomina (tags) at least for the purposes of achieving overview.

- a "catalogue"-style index of the applied accepted nomenclature as it is found in the publications. There is a long tradition of printed catalogues doing exactly this: the cataloguer selected his own set of accepted taxonomic names (or relying on a default classification) and from that point creating a view on previous publications with citation of the applied names in each publication. View without having a clear point of view =chaos.

In my opinion, the "crisis in taxonomy" feeling among biodiversity informaticians is mainly caused by an unclear distinction between nomenclature as an instrument (tag system) and the applied nomenclature (application of names as tags for taxonomic concepts. Isn't it a bit like the difference between software and the application of software?).
Here is a typical example why we should make the distinction: a name as a tag is principally unambiguous because it is fixed to a unique type specimen (or can be restricted20to that), - however, the original first application of this name to a taxonomic concept can indeed be ambiguous! (talking about zoological names in particular, ... botany has some fundamental differences which are not applicable to zoological nomenclature). 

Currently we only have fragments of the above infrastructural elements. There is  
- no master index of publications. Still it's extremely time-consuming to find individual works contained in the legacy literature digitized on biodiversitylibrary.org etc.
- by far no complete index of names (zoology= lion's share!) available as tags for taxonomic concepts. So far, ZooBank is just collecting applied nomenclature but does not focus on the available name strings (tags).
- only a few taxonomic checklists fit-for-use as a standard basis...

Cheers,
Wolfgang
-------------------------------------

Wolfgang Lorenz, Tutzing, Germany




 


 

-----Ursprüngliche Mitteilung----- 
Von: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
An: Taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Verschickt: Do., 7. Mai. 2009, 14:04
Thema: [Taxacom] RSS feeds for new (or newly digitised) names










Dear All,

I've been exploring the idea of a service that integrates RSS feeds  
containing information on biodiversity (broadly defined). A bit like  
uBio's RSS ( http://www.ubio.org/index.php?pagename=ubioRSS ) but with  
additional types of information. In order to make tis happen I need to  
create feeds for databases that don't have them, and some of these may  
be useful beyond my own muckin
g around with data integration.

You can see the list of feeds at http://biogid.info/rss

At present they include a ZooBank feed (listing latest items added  
there) and feeds for each plant family in IPNI (listing plant names  
added in the last 30 days) You can view the feeds in a feed reader, or  
in most modern web browsers. Where possible I include links to digital  
literature (e.g., through DOIs), but this is not easy (see my  
obligatory rant http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/05/nomenclators-digitised-literature-fail.html 

  ).

I hope to add some more feeds in the coming weeks.

Regards

Rod



---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html







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