[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

[Paul Kirk]

I agree with Rod. To quote from a famous mycologist, from the 5x3 index card era, 'Lists of names without specimens are not much more than waste paper'. The aforementioned IF (thanks for the complement Stephen) still has some background noise of naked names, like the ones in the quote above, some of which were derived from the 5x3 card era - they are slowly hidden pending the complete digitization of the past where their source might be discovered. One of the 'problems' with GBIF is that it takes names from the equivalent of the 5x3 index cards - the labels on specimens in museums, herbaria, fungaria and some living 'microbial' collections. They are 'unpublished' names but are now made public ... I did see the list of names of fungi under the 'Issues' heading on the GBIF web site. Now where did I put that eighth day this week :-)

Paul
________________________________
From: Roderic Page <Roderic.Page at glasgow.ac.uk>
Sent: 27 August 2016 07:13
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Cc: Paul Kirk; Tony Rees
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

Hi Tony,

I'd argue that focus sing on getting. A list of names alone is not enough, I'd spin the problem around and say we should get the taxonomic literature, because that contains the names linked to evidence. We're awash in unsupported lists of names, which we endlessly recycle up the food chain until the end up in places like GBIF and nobody has a clue where they came from or whether they are actual names.

I think we're still proceeding as if the literature was physical and we need to create 5x3 index cards of names. We can do a lot better than that.

Regards,

Rod

Rod Page wrote:

<snip>
With a "bit" of work we could move towards having full citations and page links for all eukaryote taxonomic names...
</snip>

Indeed ... or even just a list of all the names...

Cheers - Tony

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On 27 August 2016 at 02:41, Paul Kirk <P.Kirk at kew.org<mailto:P.Kirk at kew.org>> wrote:
You sure did ...


IF provides OCR'd text - via BHL links; some article level data also there thanks to your work.

Linking names to articles is low priority, for my time, especially for the old stuff ... and I'm sure 'articles' will 'soon' be a thing of the past.


Indeed we could have all those links - one of the challenges is to do it once and use it many times, rather than lots of people doing the same thing lots of times.

Paul