Judith,
Are you proposing to 1) catalog taxonomic holdings, 2) to create a taxonomic
authority file(s), or 3) to catalog specimen holdings (either by specimen or
by lots, e.g., jars, vials, etc)? These are major distinctions in strategy
and/or needs. (And, doing the third would result in the first; the second is
needed for both the first and the third.)
If you are planning to develop a specimen-based catalog, as most collections
today would do, then your basis of organization is the (possibly aggregated)
specimen record, rather than the specimen's taxonomy. The taxonomy is
a _result_, not an organizing principle, and emerges from your museum's
ongoing efforts to determine the name (at whatever level(s) of its
classification) of the organism. In other words, each specimen (or
lot/container of specimens) has a unique identification code; you enter
as much data about the specimen(s) as you can/wish, adding more
information later, as time/funds permit or need dictates.
For a collection of very disparate kinds of organisms, which might
require, in large degree, very different sets of descriptive data,
you need to develop the definitions for each. Whether or not these
various disparate taxa are then represented in a single database or
in several is an implementation issue. For example, while you might
agree that both the fish and the birds have a collector, a date-collected,
a locality, and taxonomic names that fit the phylum/class/order/...
hierarchy, and thus both could easily be put into a single database
schema, you might want to describe what the water temperature/depth were
where the fish was caught, and the plumage phase of the bird. Obviously,
these concepts are related to the respective organisms, and you might
argue that separate database schemas, and even databases are the
appropriate implementation.
The issue of not having at hand the correct hierarchical information,
name/author/date/publication/etc, is a bridge to cross as needed. Your
specimens will carry whatever determination you currently have for them.
If you later re-determine the specimen, you'll add that new determination
(and not, generally, toss out the old one). If there is no "authority" for
some of your groups of organisms, then you have a problem (as you noted).
The issue of developing taxonomic authorities is discipline-specific,
and is an activity often sponsored by the professional society representing
that discipline. The classifications of many groups of organisms are
published in traditional paper-based authorities/references; rare few
have made the transition to electronic versions (which hopefully would
be available to the community unencumbered by too-restrictive copyright
and recharging schedules for use).
As far as sharing in such work, cooperatively, one area that really
requires such collaboration is the development of authority sources,
as I noted above. For the specimens collection itself, you might want to
be very selective in your choice of a collaborator; the cost of actually
doing the data entry for a "retrospective" data capture on a very large
collection (100's of 1000's to millions of specimens) is expensive.
Any tweaking and tailoring of the various processes involved will often
net significant savings; your particular museum may not be organized
or have goals exactly like a potential collaborator's. You don't want
to make compromises that will cost both of you dearly.
And, so it goes, ad naseum.....
Peter R
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In article <[log in to unmask]>,
Fournier, Judith <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> We are in the process of converting our cataloguing system to one based
>partly on phylogenetic taxonomic databases for each phylum.
...etc., etc., ...
>difficult (and more controversial) with obscure invertebrate taxa such as
>nemertines, bryozoa, porifera, etc. They can also be a lot of work to key
>enter and proof-read, not to mention tracking down the correct hierarchical
>information in different journals (and trying to resolve conflicting
>information.)
...etc., etc., ...
> Is there anyone interested in
>sharing the development of such databases?
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