[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

[Tony Rees]

Hello Mary, all,

The World Spider Catalog (to which Angelo refers) is an excellent example
of doing things well, so far as I can see. First, there is a huge effort to
be comprehensive and a long history of continued releases and improvements,
each citable as needed (see http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/archive/). Second, the
data, originally as flat files, have been transferred into a completely
reprocessed relational database from 2014 onwards, as well as a change of
agency for intended assured persistence, according to the account given at
http://www.wsc.nmbe.ch/introduction. Third, all the taxonomic names data
(with a slight version lag) are added to, and made available for download
via, the Catalogue of Life, see
http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/details/database/id/29 ; and last, but
certainly not least, an email address is given for notification of errors
and omissions. Presumably the same can be made for many other, if not quite
all, Cat. of Life contributors for which we should be very grateful in the
main; speaking from minor past interactions the CoL is always interested in
improving data quality and does strive to replace known sources of lower
quality with higher quality equivalents as and when possible (which is the
principal means at its disposal)

Regards - Tony (no present affiliation with either World Spider Catalog or
Cat. of Life)

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://about.me/TonyRees

On 27 August 2016 at 22:59, Mary Barkworth <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu> wrote:

> A DOWNLOADABLE list of accepted names would be superb (synonyms and their
> accepted name would a lovely addition). Perhaps a "Cc-by" with date for
> attribution. That would help those of us trying to build websites for
> information about the biodiversity of a region.  Yes, I realize, the
> derivative product will not then be automatically updated - but the
> derivative product (in my case a web site of specimens and observations)
> would provide more and more information going forwards and people in the
> region who like a particular group of organisms could be encouraged to
> check for changes that need to be made.  As it is, a web site such as that
> for spiders (animals for which I do not personally care) is a huge
> frustration. Thank you for it - but please, a little more.  I mention
> spiders but it applies to all curated nomenclatural databases.  For my
> purposes, the fact that it is curated means I can trust it - and send users
> to it for primary literature.
>
> Mary
>
>