[Taxacom] Sherborn & literature code challenge
Chris Thompson
xelaalex at cox.net
Thu Sep 1 18:01:47 CDT 2011
2011
Chuck:
I fully understand what you are saying, but I need to note in regards to
your statement:
"... accept that the volume of those results could not be achieved by the
available imperfect humans in several short lifetimes ..."
That there was one man, who in a half of a life time, indexed all the
Zoological literature published between 1758 and 1850. That was Charles
Davies Sherborn, who produced the Index Animalium.
We will celebrate him and his great achievement this coming October. See the
announcement at the ICZN website (http://iczn.org/ )
Cheers
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Chuck Miller
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2011 2:49 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Life and Literature Code Challenge
"you can't expect anything sensible to result from automation ..."
" I have discovered a few BHL bibliographies for taxa in EoL which are
totally irrelevant to the taxon"
So, "a few" errors makes automated results not "sensible"? It certainly
makes them not "perfect". But, is perfection required for results to be
sensible? Even published bibliographies can have errors. So does that mean
we can't expect anything sensible from imperfect humans either?
Rather than obsess about imperfection, perhaps we should be more "sensible"
about the usefulness of automated results and accept that the volume of
those results could not be achieved by the available imperfect humans in
several short lifetimes. There are nearly 35 million pages in BHL now.
Better and smarter automation is a sensible way to deal with that volume.
Chuck Miller
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz]
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:04 PM
To: Chris Thompson; John Mignault; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Life and Literature Code Challenge
BHL uses uncorrected OCR which misses many names, even when they are in
standard binomial form! Also, I have discovered a few BHL bibliographies for
taxa in EoL which are totally irrelevant to the taxon, and just the result
of some sort of confusion! At best, BHL bibliographies should only be
considered to be raw materials for a sensible bibliography which highlights
the important references. This must, of course, be done manually, and the
Wiki sites are a good place for this to be done ...
you can't expect anything sensible to result from automation ...
Stephen
From: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
To: John Mignault <john at mignault.net>; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Thursday, 1 September 2011 8:28 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Life and Literature Code Challenge
John:
I appreciate the CHALLENGE, but I should remind ALL that "supposedly" the
BHL literature is automatically linked to species pages of the Encyclopedia
of Life (EoL). That is, as BHL literature is digitized, the contents are
scanned by uBio for scientific names. And then a link is made to the
appropriate species page.
So, the real challenge is getting the programmers of EoL to find a way so as
to properly prioritize the order in which references to BHL literature is
listed.
And that may be in part something that taxonomists must do manually. That
is, make a taxonomic judgment about what are the most important references
beyond the obvious first (original description) and see that the links
appear in the proper order from most important to insignificant.
For you all who do not know our Encyclopedia of Life, go to www.eol.org and
look, for example, at the species page for Musca domestica Linnaeus, the
common house fly and click on the BHL link [beware, the EoL will be changing
soon]
http://www.eol.org/pages/730039
You will see more than a hundred or so links, but none to the original
description (Linnaeus 1758) simply because Linnaeus NEVER made the
combination Musca domestica in the TEXT. The genus name is in the running
header and the epithet is left justified in the margin! So, the combination
is not picked up in the automatic scanning by the uBio people, etc.
But also just look at the mass of links. Sam six-pack who might was to learn
what was buzzing about his bud would be totally confused!
Sincerely,
Chris Thompson
from home
-----Original Message-----
From: John Mignault
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 3:40 PM
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] Life and Literature Code Challenge
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is sponsoring a Code Challenge as part of
the Life and Literature conference being held in Chicago November 14-15.
The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is a consortium of 12 natural
history and botanical libraries that cooperate to digitize and make
accessible the legacy literature of biodiversity held in their collections
and to make that literature available for open access and responsible use as
a part of a global “biodiversity commons.” BHL also serves as the
foundational literature component of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL). BHL
content may be freely viewed through the online reader or downloaded in part
or as a complete work in PDF, OCR text, or
JPG2000 file formats.
Your challenge is to provide
a new, innovative way to use, disseminate or display BHL data
a description of what your project is trying to accomplish
the source code to reproduce the application
any libraries or supporting code needed to reproduce the application
any build instructions or scripts are needed to build application or
instructions how to run it
any notes about your experience implementing this code: how you came up
with your design, blind alleys you went up, or surprising problems you ran
into or anything else you want to share.
The dataset
Through local and global digitization efforts, BHL has digitized over
32 million pages of taxonomic literature, representing over 45,000 titles
and 87,000 volumes (January 2011). The entire -corpus- dataset is freely
available and accessible via many open methods.
Timeline
Deadline for entries is October 17, 2011. The winner will be announced on
November 1, 2011.
More details are available on our website at
http://www.lifeandliterature.org/p/code-challenge.html
Thanks, and enter!
--j
--
John Mignault
Systems Librarian
The LuEsther T Mertz Library
The New York Botanical Garden
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