Topic 3: GUIDs for Taxon Names and Taxon Concepts
Patricia Mergen
p_mergen at YAHOO.COM
Tue Nov 8 01:20:20 CET 2005
Sorry if I send comments to the various mails and if some points were further discussed later, but coming back from meetings I have some time now to go through the many postings of this last days.
Pat
Roderic Page <r.page at BIO.GLA.AC.UK> wrote:
I'm a bit concerned that some may have conflated "Global" with
"Centralised". GUIDs do not need to be centrally issued, indeed I'd
argue that this is counter productive. To my mind the lesson from the
web is decentralisation is the only way to cope with the issue of
scale. Attempts at grandiose centralisation tend to fail. Hence, we
should plan for GUIDs to be issued by more than one data source. After
all, we are talking about GUIDs for digital objects, not ideas.
I agree here with Rod that for the GUID decentralisation is a better solution, that a "grandiose centralisation option" will tend to fail in this case, not only for technical but also for "social" reasons.
The idea that only the resolution system needs to be able to
distinguish between specimens, taxon names, etc., seems unfortunate.
With LSIDs the GUID has a namespace element, which can be readily used
to distinguish between types of record (e.g., a PubMed record and a DNA
sequence record from NCBI have different namespaces).
Assigning GUIDs solely to basionyms strikes me as crazy -- I'd suggest
most taxa aren't known by their basionyms. I'd advocate GUIDs for every
name string (with the possible exception of orthographic variants,
spelling mistakes, etc.). I don't really think this is about taxonomy,
it's about information retrieval and stability of identifiers for
digital objects.
Here also I tend to agree, what we need is a technical GUID that enable to identify what is out there, the compliance with nomenclatural, taxonomical rules has to and is already dealt with elsewhere I believe ?
Lastly, "imposing standards" is the wrong way to think about this.
Standards win support if they work, and are adopted. I'd suggest this
stuff will happen if people make compelling applications that others
make use of, not because TDWG decides what should be done.
So, my final question is, what is wrong with having each taxonomic
database serve their own GUIDs for their own data (using an agreed
format, such as RDF), and where possible GUIDs from different sources
are mapped (e.g., a name string in IPNI to one in uBio). Users employ
whatever GUID they find useful -- at least we then know what digital
object they are referring to.
If we think of the scientific literature, many paper have at least two
GUIDs (DOI and PubMed), both of which are useful, and which serve
different purposes.
This may seem like a recipe for anarchy, but we can do this now (and,
in effect we already have, my Taxonomic Search Engine serves LSIDs for
the major taxonomic name databases). If we think the solution rests
with a central authority (and ZooBank) then I think we are fooling
ourselves.
Regards
Rod
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
Professor Roderic D. M. Page
Editor, Systematic Biology
DEEB, IBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QP
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html
Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of Systematic
Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org
Search for taxon names at http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/
Find out what we know about a species at http://ispecies.org
---------------------------------
Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.
--0-1254433320-1131441620=:54611
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
<DIV>Sorry if I send comments to the various mails and if some points were further discussed later, but coming back from meetings I have some time now to go through the many postings of this last days. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Pat <BR><BR><B><I>Roderic Page <r.page at BIO.GLA.AC.UK></I></B> wrote:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=replbq style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">
<P>I'm a bit concerned that some may have conflated "Global" with<BR>"Centralised". GUIDs do not need to be centrally issued, indeed I'd<BR>argue that this is counter productive. To my mind the lesson from the<BR>web is decentralisation is the only way to cope with the issue of<BR>scale. Attempts at grandiose centralisation tend to fail. Hence, we<BR>should plan for GUIDs to be issued by more than one data source. After<BR>all, we are talking about GUIDs for digital objects, not ideas.</P>
<P> </P>
<P><EM><FONT color=#0000ff>I agree here with Rod that for the GUID decentralisation is a better solution, that a "grandiose centralisation option" will tend to fail in this case, not only for technical but also for "social" reasons.</FONT> <BR><BR></EM>The idea that only the resolution system needs to be able to<BR>distinguish between specimens, taxon names, etc., seems unfortunate.<BR>With LSIDs the GUID has a namespace element, which can be readily used<BR>to distinguish between types of record (e.g., a PubMed record and a DNA<BR>sequence record from NCBI have different namespaces).<BR><BR>Assigning GUIDs solely to basionyms strikes me as crazy -- I'd suggest<BR>most taxa aren't known by their basionyms. I'd advocate GUIDs for every<BR>name string (with the possible exception of orthographic variants,<BR>spelling mistakes, etc.). I don't really think this is about taxonomy,<BR>it's about information retrieval and stability of identifiers for<BR>digital objects.</P>
<P><EM></EM> </P>
<P><FONT color=#0000ff><EM>Here also I tend to agree, what we need is a technical GUID that enable to identify what is out there, the compliance with nomenclatural, taxonomical rules has to and is already dealt with elsewhere</EM> I believe ?<BR></FONT><BR>Lastly, "imposing standards" is the wrong way to think about this.<BR>Standards win support if they work, and are adopted. I'd suggest this<BR>stuff will happen if people make compelling applications that others<BR>make use of, not because TDWG decides what should be done.<BR><BR>So, my final question is, what is wrong with having each taxonomic<BR>database serve their own GUIDs for their own data (using an agreed<BR>format, such as RDF), and where possible GUIDs from different sources<BR>are mapped (e.g., a name string in IPNI to one in uBio). Users employ<BR>whatever GUID they find useful -- at least we then know what digital<BR>object they are referring to.<BR><BR>If we think of the scientific literature, many paper
have at least two<BR>GUIDs (DOI and PubMed), both of which are useful, and which serve<BR>different purposes.<BR><BR>This may seem like a recipe for anarchy, but we can do this now (and,<BR>in effect we already have, my Taxonomic Search Engine serves LSIDs for<BR>the major taxonomic name databases). If we think the solution rests<BR>with a central authority (and ZooBank) then I think we are fooling<BR>ourselves.<BR><BR>Regards<BR><BR>Rod<BR><BR>------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR>----------------------------------------<BR>Professor Roderic D. M. Page<BR>Editor, Systematic Biology<BR>DEEB, IBLS<BR>Graham Kerr Building<BR>University of Glasgow<BR>Glasgow G12 8QP<BR>United Kingdom<BR><BR>Phone: +44 141 330 4778<BR>Fax: +44 141 330 2792<BR>email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk<BR>web: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html<BR>reprints: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/pubs.html<BR><BR>Subscribe to Systematic Biology through the Society of
Systematic<BR>Biologists Website: http://systematicbiology.org<BR>Search for taxon names at http://darwin.zoology.gla.ac.uk/~rpage/portal/<BR>Find out what we know about a species at http://ispecies.org<BR></P></BLOCKQUOTE><p>
<hr size=1> <a href="http://us.lrd.yahoo.com/_ylc=X3oDMTFqODRtdXQ4BF9TAzMyOTc1MDIEX3MDOTY2ODgxNjkEcG9zAzEEc2VjA21haWwtZm9vdGVyBHNsawNmYw--/SIG=110oav78o/**http%3a//farechase.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.</a>
More information about the tdwg-tag
mailing list