uBio & Free taxonomic information

[David Remsen]

Dr. Thompson

You make points which I agree with and apologies if I didn't answer
your questions clearly.  You should understand that I don't think that
the efforts of your community should be free* and I think I said before
that if there were a mechanism to pay for the sort of information that
would make things easier for our library development efforts that I
would have done so.  BTW, the 'nickel' comment stemmed from an email
from you where you offered the BDWD names for $5 a name. I remembered
the number incorrectly.

We received 500K from the Mellon Foundation to explore how to build a
client/server system that would allow applications that serve data with
biological content to look up supplemental taxonomic metadata from a
single source of information.  Having a single source for this
information is obviously more efficient that having to open up each
separate application, getting out a publication, and typing in updated
vernacular and published names to supplement the information that is
already contained in the data.  It simply doesn't make sense to do the
same thing over and over again.

The idea behind the grant is to develop the technical infrastructure
and protocols so that someone building an application, be it a library
catalog, an online database, or a fulltext document in XML would have
access to a system that would handle these taxonomic metadata issues.
The grant is to demonstrate that this is possible - in principle -  to
build these network communication tools.  By doing this we could
demonstrate that there is a need and an avenue for a solution.   We are
doing this because the current way just doesn't work for us.

We started with the freely available ITIS data set to populate our data
model.  We also hired a taxonomist, Dr. David Patterson, to assemble
additional classifications and name information.  We are hoping if we
can demonstrate that, with some technical underpinnings, taxonomic
information can have a much more broad application that the larger
taxonomic initiatives like SP2000 and GBIF will accommodate those
needs.  We aren't a business.  We are a library.   I imagine we could
leave ITIS as the core of our name server and leave it at that but it
doesn't cover the scope of what we really need.   We are driven by the
information in our holdings.  For better or worse, valid or invalid,
there is an enormous index of names linked to factual information that
needs to be addressed within a 'system.'    Other data models are
derived for different purposes.  It makes sense to initially create our
own driven by the needs of the pilot system.  It also makes sense to
populate the database as we are able.  Dr. Patterson has spent enormous
amounts of time digging information from the literature himself as well
as obtaining permission to use other sources as well.   If, at the end,
we come out with something that proves useful and we can get support
for it then we can figure out how to pay people to manage and clean up
the data we collected.  But right now we have parts and we have a case
to make.  We are small, we don't have a PR apparatus.  It's me and
Paddy and some programmers.  We have two years.  We want to solve a
problem we have and to do right by the taxonomic community.  That's our
intention.  If we aren't going in the right direction then we will
change course but we will try to solve our problem.

* I flagged the word 'free' because we say in our site that if we
produced something that others wanted to use we would give it to them.
This stems from our belief that we (uBio) shouldn't profit from this.
Our hope is to produce something that could create a conduit for
support to taxonomy.  If there were a mechanism to generate money to
funnel back to those who contribute I would love it.  But at the moment
we are simply trying to prove a concept.

I have a few questions myself that might make things clearer for me
regarding your issues.

Do you disagree, in principle, to our trying to address the problem
from our library perspective?  Do you recognize that we have a need and
stake in the global taxonomic initiatives?

Do you feel we should spend less on developing the technical
infrastructure which does not exist to meet our needs and spend more on
simply purchasing names for the data model?  Should we pay more
taxonomists directly?  About 20% of the grant (100K) is being used to
support taxonomists or the collection of name information.

What is your opinion of the current suite of offerings of 'lists of
lists' such as ITIS or the SP2000 annual checklist?  Do you object to
their use within a system like our name server?  If so, how should they
be used?   Some of our actions regarding names stems from the lack of
coherence concerning what is freely available and what we might need to
pay for.

Thanks for your time and cheers,

DR