[Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

[Doug Yanega]

John Grehan wrote:

>Such databases
>that include distributional information based on specialist research can
>also be very useful in biogeographic studies (so again quality of the
>source in terms of specialist input is more the issue)
>
>Databases that allow one to see the original labels and specimen are, for
>my purposes, potentially most useful.

Unfortunately, original data labels are often extremely misleading, 
especially regarding distributional information. After georeferencing 
over 200,000 insect specimens from multiple institutions, the figures 
work out to over 20% of all original labels have significant 
omissions or ambiguities (the latter category being primarily things 
like abbreviations, uncertain reference points, uncertain date 
formats, or handwriting problems), and some 5% of all original labels 
have genuine errors of one sort or another (mostly typographical 
errors). I doubt such problems are unique to insect labels. A 
taxonomic specialist may be able to fix problems with taxon IDs, but 
that same person may be ill-equipped to fix problems with label data 
(or, even if so, may not have the required time to do this). Any 
digitized resources based on verbatim label data (without a quality 
control step to confirm each and every record and correct mistakes) 
will serve only to propagate such errors. Add to that the potential 
for additional errors introduced by data entry personnel, or careless 
georeferencing (i.e., use of automated georeferencing protocols, 
which have a staggering failure rate), and the locality and phenology 
data in most online resources is - simply put - not trustworthy.

It is not very hard to capture specimen data, but it is excruciating 
and massively time-consuming to exercise any legitimate measure of 
quality control, whether it be taxon IDs or label data. My impression 
is that far more people are aware of (and take measures to address) 
the taxon ID issue than the label data issue. No one would dispute 
that a specimen record filed under the wrong species name is worse 
than worthless, but not many people seem to be similarly concerned 
about records that place a species in the wrong time or place - if 
only because they are unaware how commonly the label data are bad. 
That, I feel, is a grave oversight.

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82