[tcs-lc] Taxonomic Product or Taxonomic Data

[Richard Pyle]

> Are we passing the product of taxonomic research or raw taxonomic data?

Both, I would hope!  I'm nt sure what you mean by "raw taxonomic data" --
but this sounds a lot like names to me, whereas taxonomic research sounds
like concepts.

> 1) We imagine taxonomists doing their work and then publishing the
> results using the TCS/LC schema. Basically publishing taxon concepts,
> when to use them, what to call them and how they relate, what can and
> can't be said about data tagged with different names and concepts etc.
> We probably have about this level of coverage in the schema at the moment.

I can imagine that in the long term.  I think in the short term it will be a
smaller subset of folks who capture the concepts from traditional
publications and from well-developed databases, while the larger base of
taxonomists continue what they've been doing for about 250 years.

> 2) We imagine taxonomists publishing everything they do using the
> schema. Every specimen examined and what it was identified as. All the
> 'agents' they know about and the different teams they have worked in and
> how their names have been abbreviated and where they have collected etc
> etc. The nitty gritty of stuff that would be very useful for some one
> producing a monographic revision to have to hand but that an ecologist
> or biomedical prospector wouldn't care about at all.

Eventally, yes -- but not in "Version 1" (or whatever it's called).

> I think that some of the discussions that we are having at the moment
> would be resolved if we had a definite policy on which of these two
> approaches we were following.

Not sure -- I see #1 above as being even more ambitious than what I'm after.
I want to see a schema that "seamlessly" integrates taxonomic names and
taxonomic concepts (while acknowledging the distinction), and is practical
for the various people who deal with the problems of comparing/merging
different datasets in way that alleviates the need to examine individual
data records one at a time.  I think it will start at the
GBIF/SEEK/IPNI/TDWG/Nomenclator level, then expand into the Natural History
Museum collection and Ecological Research Project level, and then finaly
trickle into the desktops of the individual taxonomists who create new
defined concepts and establish new Code-compliant names.

Aloha,
Rich