[Taxacom] How good is Zoological Record's harvesting of taxonomic data? [was Latin anyone?]

[Stephen Thorpe]

yeah, ZR still miss names - sometimes by missing the publications, and sometimes 
missing some names within a publication - but overall they are really pretty 
good at aggregating names. A more serious problem is that I think they should do 
just that, instead of also now trying to integrate names (listing synonyms, 
etc.), as they are far worse at the latter than they are at the former. ZR is an 
invaluable resource for building something more solid, like Wikispecies. I do 
wish, though, that BHL would digitize all the old volumes of ZR, as I do not 
have easy access to these, and they are PRIMARY sources for nomenclatural acts 
such as type species designations, etc. (a point that is often overlooked) ...

Stephen




________________________________
From: Neal Evenhuis <neale at bishopmuseum.org>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" 
<taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Mon, 18 October, 2010 11:24:09 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] How good is Zoological Record's harvesting of taxonomic 
data? [was Latin anyone?]

Actually, Zoo Record's problem is not a language barrier -- it *was* (not now 
apparently - however see below) -- reflective of what was being received in the 
British library system. If no one sent anything in, they did not abstract it. 
How they missed our journal is a mystery, though, since it is received by the 
Natural History Museum and other places in the UK ....

But that was another error in the 1990s when there were problems in catching 
things. They *should* have improved their harvesting techniques since then. 
However ....they missed (at least one) paper with new taxa published in 2008 by 
a MUCH larger publishing house than us (Elsevier):

http://bit.ly/cMVlYm

Go figure ...

Since most have to pay to see their harvesting results (online or hard copy 
subscriptions), perhaps they should pay US for finding things they missed? :-)

-Neal
________________________________________

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 17:31:26 -0700 (PDT)

From: Stephen Thorpe 
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz<mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>>

Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Latin anyone?

To: Neal Evenhuis <neale at bishopmuseum.org<mailto:neale at bishopmuseum.org>>

Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu<mailto:taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>

Message-ID: 
<416059.34304.qm at web114213.mail.gq1.yahoo.com<mailto:416059.34304.qm at web114213.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>>


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Here is an ironic name missing from Zoological Record (ION):

http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Dactylomyia_vockerothi

no language barrier here (unless we need a translator for Australianized 
American English!)