[Taxacom] Fwd: Re: Centrally supported electronic archive

Wed May 27 15:40:32 CDT 2009

This conversation reminds of the early days when we all squeezed 
digital images down to as small size (= low resolution) as possible 
because we thought disc space was expensive and transmission time 
slow.  If only we had the full hi res of those images today......

Phillipson is dead on.

The user (and the user community across all sectors) needs the entire 
article, images and all, or an iron-clad electronic channel to it.

Please.

Dan Janzen,
Winnie Hallwachs,

both heavily dependent users of your product.

>From: "Peter B. Phillipson" <Peter.Phillipson at mobot.org>
>To: <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>Date: Wed, 27 May 2009 11:33:16 +0200
>Thread-Index: AcneqRFtUnwHOa4xS9+EWrq747ornAAAYh6A
>Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Centrally supported electronic archive
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>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
>
>
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>The Taxacom archive going back to 1992 may be searched with either 
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>
>Or (2) a Google search specified as: 
>site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here