uBio & Free taxonomic information

[Richard Pyle]

Thanks, Martin (& Mark), for the excellent post on this important but
under-discussed issue. I've known about Prometheus for some time now, but
inspired by your post I have downloaded all the latest materials and will
study them in detail later today.

> Attention should also be drawn to other projects that are currently
> researching this area of taxonomic databases such as
> Nomencurator (http://www.nomencurator.org/),
> Seek(http://seek.ecoinformatics.org), MoReTax
> (http://www.bgbm.org/BioDivInf/Projects/MoreTax), and work on the
> Potential Taxon concept by Walter Berendsohn et al.(
> http://www.bgbm.org/IOPI/IOPIModel73/7304ptax.htm).

As a shameless personal plug, I might also point to my own efforts along
this lines:

http://www2.bishopmuseum.org/PBS/schema/PyleSchema.PDF

Certainly not as well-developed as the others you cite, but the above draft
is only a small part of the complete model as it currently exists, and I
also have build a robust user interface (which I call "Taxonomer").

In any case, the remainder of your post very eloquently describes the
problem as it exists, and I would encourage all Taxacomers to spend some
time exploring and thinking about these issues.

Aloha,
Rich

Richard L. Pyle
Natural Sciences Database Coordinator, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/pylerichard.html