Taxacom: Fauna Europaea

Tue May 21 04:59:52 CDT 2024

Dear Paul,

you should talk with Christoph Häuser, copied in, who is trying to revive Fauna Europaea.
My understanding is to leave the MfN systems behind and start something simple with the help of the Naturkundemuseum Stuttgart.

Best,
Markus

--
Markus Döring
GBIF & Catalogue of Life

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> On 21. May 2024, at 11:24, muscapaul via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> 
> 
> Questions about Fauna Europaea have been posted in this forum before and
> these received answers with varying degrees of satisfaction. Getting into
> contact with administrators of Fauna European has been problematic to say
> the least. After trying for more than a year I (finally) received a message
> from someone responsible for Fauna Europaea late 2022. It was stated that
> the 'situation with regard to Fauna Europaea unfortunately is quite
> desperate'. Some other quotes from the message are 'the underlying db
> system now requires advanced IT knowledge to even do simple modifications
> or update the basic data', 'the museum now has different priorities (from
> basic taxonomy), and our IT team is already by many demands overstretched',
> 'unable to get the dedicated personnel support needed'. The latest issue
> with Fauna Europaea has been the hack of the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN) in
> Berlin which resulted in Fauna Europaea going offline. The site has now
> been offline since mid-October and there is still no prognosis of when it
> will be back online. Communication channels like the Facebook page (
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ffaunaeu&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca83fbe84c8994cc0d07708dc797cc519%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638518823995586766%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=1pUZM0l6hC35KN3Ec5EibU9T2Td7Md0vUXvw%2BhHCVWo%3D&reserved=0), the LinkedIn page (
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fcompany%2Ffauna-europaea%2Fabout&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca83fbe84c8994cc0d07708dc797cc519%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638518823995586766%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=CCELYYuPv9rMXCC4uf4J4XkgYnCxMiUOlJYplcZHlpw%3D&reserved=0) and Twitter/X (
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2Ffauna_eu&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca83fbe84c8994cc0d07708dc797cc519%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638518823995743068%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8Guj8iXLqa052Mi%2FiQkiyT8yUzs7l4KHvHC5HUxshg0%3D&reserved=0) are silent (and have been since 2017).
> 
> 
> 
> Fauna Europaea has been struggling since the migration to the MfN in 2012,
> despite the best intentions of several of those involved. Stillo, even
> during the last decade Fauna Europaea has remained an important source of
> distributional information about the European fauna, allthough it was more
> than 10 years ago that data were last updated (the data management
> facility announced
> in 2012 'that might take some months' never materialised). It is an almost
> indispensable source of information (especially for those with limited
> access to academic resources like university libraries, either physical or
> online, and collections) and is built with public (European) funds. Many
> publications (faunistic, taxonomic and otherwise) refer to data on the
> Fauna Europaea website but these references at this moment are useless as
> the site is still offline. It is understandable that the MfN needs to get
> their primary work process up and running again. Yet it should not be
> possible that a serious mishap at the hosting institution should result in
> this infrastructure being offline for more than seven months with no
> prospect of it coming back online any time soon.
> 
> 
> 
> Apparently, Fauna Europaea is now just relying on staff of the MfN, while
> in the past there were also a Steering Committee (see
> https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20230803210108%2Fhttps%3A%2F%2Ffauna-eu.org%2Fcontact&data=05%7C02%7Ctaxacom%40lists.ku.edu%7Ca83fbe84c8994cc0d07708dc797cc519%7C3c176536afe643f5b96636feabbe3c1a%7C0%7C0%7C638518823995743068%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=3JHUgtrMDDqEnPzVIN6yBss4JLtmojWSvPaxs10xIYI%3D&reserved=0
> since the official website is still offline) and a coordinator. The
> Steering Committee has had no formal meetings or made any decisions in
> recent years. As far as I know a coordinator has not been active since the
> migration to MfN. The group coordinators and taxonomic specialists have not
> been involved in any interactions with or received and communications from
> Fauna Europaea since the migration to MfN and the network has fallen apart.
> Several valued past contributors have died and taken their data into the
> grave. As group coordinator, I frequently received messages from taxonomic
> specialists and other dipterists about erroneous data, missing species
> (recently described species were not added) or other outdated information u
> ntil Fauna Europaea went offline last October. Now the questions I receive
> are when it will come back. I could not and cannot give any answers.
> 
> 
> 
> So, at this point the questions are: What is the present status of Fauna
> Europaea as an organisation? Who are responsible for the long-term
> decisions about Fauna Europaea? What can we do to get Fauna Europaea back
> as a functioning, accessible infrastructure with the possibility of
> updating data? What can we do to prevent a recurrence of the present
> situation?
> 
> 
> 
> Any feedback, answers, updates are welcome!
> 
> 
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> 
> 
> Paul Beuk
> 
> Curator of biology
> 
> Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht
> 
> Joint group coordinator Diptera – Brachycera and Diptera - Nematocera
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> Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity for about 37 years, 1987-2024.
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