[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org - BHL side response

Wed May 13 05:48:40 CDT 2009

Dear Chris

Entomology or so is not fine grained enough, as you point out. Best would be
to get either research groups involved at their research level. For example
spiders, fish or ants could be one, or then it could be based on regions, eg
Madagascar, or conservation issues such as red-listing of mammals, or the
pollinators. The projects have to be research driven.

I would go beyond nomenclature vs taxonomy but try to activate/mobilize
users of names for particular bodies of literature (see above). 

I would also really make an effort to cover all, not just the very old
literature that is out of what you currently perceive as copyright. This
"new" literature is the one that interests most of the people that might be
of help, and that would be of use far beyond names. Why not make for this
"new" literature accessible so that only those pages appear that contain
descriptions?

I would also maintain another line of support for individuals that can
demonstrate that they work on catalogues of particular taxa, such as fish,
Solanaceae (eg PBIs, etc.) etc. They then could be accepted if they can
supply you with a bibliography.

The fishing expeditions for not yet catalogue taxa ought be low priority and
ought come along as "collateral damage" when scanning in the serials that
are part of above selection project.

Donat

  _____  

From: Chris Freeland [mailto:Chris.Freeland at mobot.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 1:20 PM
To: Donat Agosti; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org - BHL side response

Donat, all,

Just a point of clarification - BHL hasn't been randomly scanning content,
but rather working with partner libraries to identify well-curated taxonomic
subsets within our collections while also staying in line with the broader
goals and themes set by EOL. For instance, SI's entomology collection is
fully barcoded and bibliographically complete, so they've focused their
efforts there; Harvard MCZ has taken the same approach with herpetology.
MBL responded to EOL's initial theme of "marine life" (what *exactly* is
that, taxonomically speaking?) and so scanned large, broad ranges of their
collection to try to cover that wide theme.  MOBOT/NYBG/Harvard Botany have
been working down a prioritized list originally created 5 years ago (a
half-decade; sorry, Rod!) and revised here: http://bit.ly/15ECET, along with
other botanical journals and monographs.

That said, I am in complete and total agreement that we need a way to make
finer-grained decisions on what to send for scanning now that we're past our
proof of concept stage.  We have a functioning workflow for digitization and
an infrastructure for delivery.  How best to fill our repository and with
what is a subject of constant discussion within our ranks. 

Our current line of thinking is to amass as many specialist bibliographies
as possible and aggregate citations by journal in order to prioritize those
journals for digitization.  We've been scrambling to put a system in place
to accommodate this, which we plan to demo and discuss at eBiosphere and
announce through this list & our blog.  If others have thoughts on a process
that allows us to get the right titles into our scanning queue then let us
know.  We're here to (scan &) serve, not disappoint.

Chris
BHL, MOBOT

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu on behalf of Donat Agosti
Sent: Wed 5/13/2009 2:51 AM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

I agree with Rod, this can't be accepted to think in such long ranges.

I think, there ought be much more strategic thinking in this.  Eg the
Biodivlibrary should not randomly (from a taxonomic point of view) scan in
stuff, but target specific groups. Taxonomic experts should be able to apply
for slots that would cover all their literature. This does not mean to scan
one reprint after the other, but rather serials that include the largest
number of papers. The collaterals, others papers not covering the target
group, would still be an incentive for others to comprehend, what a
tremendous resource this is.

For me this sort of decadal or grand thinking seems to be completely off or
decoupled from a research strategy that asks questions and the finds way to
solve them, including the building up of the necessary IT infrastructure and
content.
It is rather infused by Google creating in our community and funding agency
the misunderstood desire to create the mother system of all the biodiversity
information.

It is similar to planning to fly to Mars, but without the billions of
dollars to spend.

So, what we need is strategic thinking coupled with tools that allow editing
and linking data in a very efficient way that will essentially lead to data
that can be used new insights and knowledge. Only this will lead to a
community that is willing to chip in their efforts and shorten the time
substantially.

Donat

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:34 AM
To: David Patterson
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Am I the only horrified by this timescale?

On 12 May 2009, at 16:45, David Patterson wrote:

>
> Expectation management:  How long before this all operational? Best 
> to think
> decadally.
>

Why can't we have this sooner? Like, *cough*, now? Is it crazy to 
suggest that if all these names were dumped in a wiki, together with 
annotations (e.g., links to literature), any our community set about 
adding/annotating/cleaning, we could have this done rather sooner...?

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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