Indian Fungi Database structure

[Shubhada Nagarkar]

Dear Sir/madam,

I am a librarian in the Bioinformatics Center, University of Pune, India.
I am pursuing my Ph.d. in Library and Information Science. I am pursuing
this research under the guidance of Prof. Harsha Parekh, (Chair) SNDT
University, Mumbai and Prof. Geoffrey Bowker (co-Chair) UCSD, USA.  My
research area is Biodiversity informatics and in particular the
construction of the database structure for Indian fungal species. The
structure of the database is based on the Information needs of various
types of users such as Mycologists, agriculturists, medical mycologists,
industrialists, etc. During the study I will synthesize the contents of
the various primary (books, journal articles) and secondary (abstracting
services) sources of information as well as existing worldwide databases
available on the Internet.  Apart from this I have designed a
questionnaire to be circulated to the various researchers from these areas.

The questionnaire is available online at
http://202.41.70.82/ques/quesup.htm

It has been observed that several worldwide efforts
concerning "Biodiversity Informatics" are underway with the aim of
digitizing biodiversity data and making the results of biotic surveys
easily accessible on the Internet.  But little importance has been given
to documenting fungi species. It has also been observed that these
databases are inadequate to use for average users and scientists.  First,
they are not comprehensive in coverage and are unable to answer all
possible questions of the users.  Second, they are too complex to
understand and designed without consulting users.

I am writing to ask you to kindly help me understand your information
needs by providing the maximum possible information, your candid comments
and suggestions by filling the online questionnaire.  If you have any
difficulties in filling the questionnaire please contact me at
shubha at bioinfo.ernet.in Filling up the questionnaire will not take more
than 15-20 mins.  I would also appreciate if you forward the same to the
students, other researchers at your department/ organization

Thanking you in advance

Sincerely
Shubha Nagarkar
http://bioinfo.ernet.in/library/personal/main.html