Regarding assignment of GUIDs to electronic records rather than physical specimens -- do you feel the same way about taxonomic names? I'd hate to have 5-10 ID numbers for every taxon name (e.g., one generated by GBIF, one generated by ITIS, one generated by Species2000, etc.) My understanding of the whole point of BioGUIDs was to get away from this sort of duplication.
Yes and no. I think the question collapses in the case of nomenclatural records. I believe the codes should move and endorse nomenclatural databases to be authoritative for providing authoritative name records. Since these are data objects, a GUID is natural to them, and real world (which is abstract in the case of names anyways) and data world are congruent.
I am more reserved about demands to provide a central registry for taxon concepts (or "derived/secondary" taxon concepts, if the nomenclatural act of creating a name itself is considered a taxon concept as well):
If somebody publishes a description of a taxon in Germany, printed or digital, perhaps providing a GUID of the nomenclatural data record the description assigns itself to, perhaps providing a DOI for its publication - I see no reason to go to a separate database, create a taxon concept record there, and then cite it back in your own digital publication. Jessie Kennedy and I differ on this point.
Gregor---------------------------------------------------------- Gregor Hagedorn (G.Hagedorn@bba.de) Institute for Plant Virology, Microbiology, and Biosafety Federal Research Center for Agriculture and Forestry (BBA) Königin-Luise-Str. 19 Tel: +49-30-8304-2220 14195 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49-30-8304-2203