[Taxacom] Centrally supported electronic archive

[Richard Pyle]

I'll let Jim and Donat duke out the terminology.  I used to call it a
"Subreference" -- and my main reason for defining it was to be able to
assign specific authorship and/or dates to particular section(s) of a unit
of publication that might appear in a bibliography (book, journal article,
etc.).  Really just an elegant way to deal with authorship of a taxon
description that differs from the authorship of the containing publication.
But it wasn't until we discussed this notion at TDWG last year that it
seemed clear in my mind that the best way to define this nebulous
"subreference" was in the context of what Plazi defines as a "Treatment".

Is it perfect?  No.  But I think it solves more problems than it creates.
Maybe we can use the term "Taxon Treatment" to refer to the treatment of a
particular taxon within a larger published work, to distinguish it from the
generic "Treatment" as Jim defines it.

Also, I see no reason that such "taxon treatments" need to appear on
cosecutive pages.  There may be many examples where these taxon treatments
occur across non-sequential pages.  Moreover, I can imagine overlap of
blocks of text that apply to more than one taxon treatment.  I see these as
examples of complexities that need to be addressed, but not show-stoppers.

The reason I think this is important is that if something like BHL's
CiteBank emerges as our collective repository for citations (with associated
GUIDs), then I think these units of publication ought to be included within
the scope.

Aloha,
Rich

> -----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 27, 2009 8:57 AM
> To: Paul van Rijckevorsel
> Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Centrally supported electronic archive
> 
> These are exactly the issues we wrestled with Paul, and every 
> solution we can up with was an unsatisfactory compromise.
> 
> The problem lies with the concept of the protologue itself, which on
> the surface seems arbitrary and subject to interpretation.   We had
> the same problem with IPNI references.  In theory it is 
> possible be specify the protologue in its entirity:  Bloggsia 
> 25: 15, 19-21, fig.
> 7, map 3.  The simplest approach is, using this case as an 
> example, is to prepare a PDF of the six complete pages that 
> hold bits of the protologue.  We considered trimming of all 
> the surrounding non-protologue stuff, but his involved too 
> much manual assessment and processing and the possibility of 
> introduced error.
> 
> I think Rich's ontological approach of defining all the terms 
> involved in this arena before getting too far into it is a 
> good one.  Until we do this Rich and I will not be able to 
> have a conversation - I see a 'treatment' as the inclusive 
> article or monograph, Rich sees it as collection of my 
> fragments.  Once we get the terminology sorted out, we can 
> use it to define and deliver the various levels of 
> atomization and aggregation that Donat alludes to.  Where and 
> how do we want to do this?
> 
> My problem is I can not see a one size fits all solution.  In 
> one situation a protologue fragment will be required, in 
> others, the entire article or work (for the reasons Peter 
> outlines).  BHL will deliver the latter.  Not sure at all 
> about the former.
> 
> jim
> 
> On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Paul van Rijckevorsel 
> <dipteryx at freeler.nl> wrote:
> > 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
> >
> >
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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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