[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org
David Remsen (GBIF)
dremsen at gbif.org
Thu May 14 03:52:28 CDT 2009
I agree with Jim that large chunks of the necessary framework are in
place to achieve something collective, representative, and
valuable. What that something is exactly I think appears to have a
common core but seems to diverge at bit at the edges. I don't agree
with Paddy or Tony that nothing exists for reconciling orthography,
spelling variants, nomenclatural synonymy, etc. It's exactly what
Name/ClassificationBank was intended to do. Knowing who set it up you
might be right that it isn't coherent, however the basic components
were in place to do this within the index itself. The missing
component is a resource publication framework that is scaleable and
has sufficiently low latency to keep publishers of the source
resources happy. I think Rich's observation that some sense of common
purpose and ownership are also key.
What I see as the logical scope of the Global Names Architecture is a
capacity to collectively inventory the vast range of resources that
either contain taxon names or that treat them in some way. I want to
know, at any instant, for any taxonomic domain, the degree of
concordance between the names that exist in all the stuff we want
people to access and their treatment in both a nomenclatural and
taxonomic context. I want to know for any name, if it can be tied
either directly or through some orthographic inference, to some
taxonomic or nomenclatural event. I want the capacity to answer
exactly the sorts of questions that Jim and Paddy posed the other day.
I think we get there by creating a really simple way for building a
low latency index of all these resources. The GNI is a start but I
don't favour it as the means to access the symantic and syntactic
information about names that we need to answer those questions.
Iterating over LSIDs and URIs for these things doesn't scale and
brings down the web sites of those friendly partners who want to be
indexed. The GNI is very useful however, for publicising a resource
and exposing the orthography of the name. We can do all sorts of
things with this index that include remediating interchange between
resources by adding additional taxonomic, nomenclatural and
orthographic interventions to them but these should be acquired
through a more efficient mechanism and applied, not derived from the
index itself.
I am very excited by the possibilities of the new Darwin Core terms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm
) and the use of the DwC Text Guide (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/text/index.htm
) to support relatively simple, understandable, yet sufficiently rich
exchange of taxonomic and nomenclatural data. I'm talking really
simple. Like registering a resource, creating a DwC archive of the
data and referencing that file. This scales and creates the low
latency and enables a degree of richness in the things we index to be
able to answer the questions that Jim and Paddy posted in the past days.
Our strategy at GBIF to contribute to the GNA is in the development of
a simplified, accessible, and share-able resource registration system
that can support different initiatives. It is also the creation of a
data publication framework that provides value to data publishers,
supports standards and exchange protocols but provides efficient
access to full data indexes, enabling a low-latency and richly
detailed index of resources to be developed and maintained. If we
build a decent annotation mechanism into such an index that gets back
to the publisher of the resource we might accommodate some of the
benefits of the wiki approach without getting everyone to abandon
their current work processes.
My view is that this will enable the sort of 10,000 foot (meter?) view
that we are all discussing here. A view that provides some context
to the dissociated landscape of initiatives and a rationale for why
they exist and what they contribute. A view, that shows there is
collective value and purpose in them and provides us with a collective
means to make statements to external stakeholders as to what we are
doing and how we are progressing.
Best to all,
David Remsen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Remsen, Senior Programme Officer
Electronic Catalog of Names of Known Organisms
Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel: +45-35321472 Fax: +45-35321480
Mobile +45 27201472
Skype: dremsen
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 14, 2009, at 12:03 AM, Jim Croft wrote:
> I absolutely agree with you Paddy that experience has been that
> taxonomy moves in decadal time scales because there is just so much of
> it and as you point out political will and social structures have not
> always been on our side.
>
> Now, as you also point out, large chunks of necessary framework are
> already in place, so I am really hoping we can move quickly on the
> 'content'.
>
> Much of the Australian (and global) 'content' is still physically
> scattered on paper and specimens in the libraries, herbaria and
> museums of the world. Mobilizing all of this digitally is huge job
> and there are indeed many decades of work in it. But if we can apply
> many hands and smart ways of doing things hopefully the task can be
> completed quickly.
>
> Points on comprehensiveness, quality and authority are well taken.
> This aspect will and must go on forvever.
>
> jim
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:55 AM, David Patterson
> <dpatterson at eol.org> wrote:
>> The reason for suggesting a decade or so is not because of
>> technological
>> constraints. The architecture and tools are being assembled today.
>> Agencies
>> such as GBIF, EOL, nomenclators and the like can and do invest in a
>> semantic
>> names architecture, and through a variety of workshops dozens of
>> skilled
>> bio-informaticians have contributed their wisdom and enthusiasm.
>>
>> Rather, the rate of progress to achieving a comprehensive,
>> authoritative,
>> and effective names architecture is all about political will, and
>> the social
>> challenges of engaging all of the key players rather than having to
>> reinvent
>> wheels, and the relocation of resources to finance the
>> transformation.
>>
>> There is no difficulty to embed, say, the names of Australia's
>> biota within
>> this architecture within much less than two years, and for a very
>> small
>> fraction of the $30M. The challenge is extend this to the full
>> spectrum of
>> our needs inclusive of the quality and authority we seek.
>>
>> I would rather not defend the decadal statement, but my experiences
>> over the
>> last 9 years suggest that this is realistic. If we can mobilize
>> enthusiasm,
>> resources to achieve a comprehensive names architecture within the
>> next few
>> years, I for one would be delighted - because then we can get back
>> to the
>> real biology.
>>
>> Paddy
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Croft
>> Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:17 AM
>> To: Roderic Page
>> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org
>>
>> Yesterday $30million was flagged in the Australian budget to enhance
>> the Atlas of Living Australia, over two (!) years. I would be very
>> surprised indeed if a major push on a list of known taxa and their
>> names and associated information is not going to be a major part of
>> this.
>>
>> Decadal time scales are no really going to cut it with governments
>> who
>> need something to show within a single electoral cycle.
>>
>> Two years is totally scary and we are definitely going to have to
>> look
>> at alternative approaches to sourcing, evaluating and capturing the
>> data.
>>
>> jim
>>
>> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Roderic Page
>> <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> 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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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> _________________
>> Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
>> http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
>>
>> "Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
>> - Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)
>>
>> "I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said,
>> but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
>> meant."
>> - attributed to Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> _________________
> Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
> http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft
>
> "Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
> - Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)
>
> "I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said,
> but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I
> meant."
> - attributed to Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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>
> The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either
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>
> (1) http://taxacom.markmail.org
>
> Or (2) a Google search specified as: site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/
> pipermail/taxacom your search terms here
>
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