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

Wed May 13 12:33:17 CDT 2009

There's another angle from which to approach this. An extremely
effective way to capture the relevant taxonomic literature for a taxon
is to capture the reprint collection of a specialist taxonomist. If
digitizing entire journal runs is seen as a "vertical" approach, this
can be seen as the taxonomically "horizontal" approach.

The advantage is that the taxonomic and physical selection of papers
has already been done through the career efforts of taxon specialists.
In the case of major institutional section holdings, this is the
combined labor of generations of workers. The result is
very-near-complete coverage for a taxon, including the ridiculously
obscure publications that will probably never be captured in
full-journal-run scans.

Of course there's going to be overlap with "vertical" scanning
efforts. That's a really minor problem -- the least of our
difficulties is having too many digital copies of taxonomic
publications. Realistically, if a taxon-specific scanning project is
aware that a few major journals for that taxon are being
comprehensively scanned, it's easy enough to yank those reprints from
the workflow to avoid duplicate labor.

This is an approach that we're implementing with the literature for
the Decapoda, and are planning to expand to the Peracarida (which,
together, should cover about 2/3 of the Crustacea).

I'd love to see how we can best integrate the two approaches: vertical
scanning of entire journals & volumes by (e.g.) BHL, and
taxon-specific capture by scanning reprint libraries.

-Dean
-- 
Dean Pentcheff
pentcheff at gmail.com

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 3:48 AM, Donat Agosti <agosti at amnh.org> wrote:
> 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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