[Taxacom] Centrally supported electronic archive

[Peter B. Phillipson]

I do want to deal with the whole article..... 

We should all be encouraged to read the entire paper or chapter in which a
protologue (or any nomenclatural change) is published, there is often
crucial information about the whereabouts of specimens the author has cited
and other valuable information in an introduction, illustration or elsewhere
in an article, that can aid interpretation of the original author's
intentions, especially in older publications. 

I have often been frustrated in the past by requesting the page numbers
cited for a particular protologue through inter-library loans, only to
discover that essential parts of a protologue and its context were missing.
With electronic media it doesn't usually cost more to send or download all
the pages of an article than just the 1 page that contains the bare minimum,
so why cut corners? 

We should also encourage authors (and databasers) to be as comprehensive as
possible in citing earlier taxonomic references, so that it is easier for
future generations to obtain all the relevant pages of a publication -
citing both the entire publication and the specific pages that contain all
of the elements of a protologue.

Pete Phillipson

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Paul van
Rijckevorsel
Sent: 27 May 2009 08:44
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Centrally supported electronic archive


From: "Jim Croft" <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 11:59 PM

> When
> someone calls [f]or the protologue, we do not want to send them the 
> whole article.  With limited resources we can not afford to scan an[d] 
> store the whole article when all we want is one page of it...

***
Yes, an important issue: if all you want is the protologue, you do not want
to have to deal with a whole article. However, a complicating factor is that
from a nomenclatural perspective it is not necessarily immediately apparent
what the protologue is; in fact it needs to be be 'circumscribed' from case
to case. In the modern literature this will (almost always) be
straightforward, but the introduction, etc to a book or article may also
contain material that belongs to the protologue. Say, the Acknowlegdements
may comment: "we are deeply grateful for the hospitality of Mr Przilowsky;
in acknowledgement we have named our third species in honour of his eldest
daughter". Theoretically, there may be a separation of hundreds of pages
between one part of the protologue and another.

["Protologue ...: everything associated with a name at its valid
publication, i.e. description or diagnosis, illustrations, references,
synonymy, geographical data, citation of specimens, discussion, and
comments."]

It is not required that all the requirements of valid publication are met in
a single publication; the final 'validating' publication only needs to refer
to all the required parts, which need to have been effectively published
earlier. For example the final publication may be a few lines only, but
refer to a page-filling illustration elsewhere. So a protologue can be
spread over more than one publication. All in all, 'circumscribing' a
protologue is not a trivial matter. However, if the result goes into an
accessible database, it need be done only once.

Paul


_______________________________________________

Taxacom Mailing List
Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/mailman/listinfo/taxacom

The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
methods:

(1) http://taxacom.markmail.org

Or (2) a Google search specified as:
site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here