(Already posted to TAXACOM, so apologies if you have already seen this - CGH)

The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT) is a Network of Excellence project, funded by the EU for 5 years (http://www.e-taxonomy.eu/). One of the deliverables of the project will be a Bibliographic Resource to be known as the European Virtual Library of Taxonomic Literature (E-ViTL).

This part of the project is being managed by the Natural History Museum, London and we are in the process of defining detailed specifications for such a service. We are keen (naturally!) to ensure that the service will meet actual user needs and so, if this is an area dear to your heart, you are warmly invited to participate in an online survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=999183808985 (the survey will close at midnight on 11th May)

This will ensure that your views are taken into account.

NOTE: E-ViTL is likely to be a resource discovery tool rather than a repository of full text articles. It could, however, point users to repositories, such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org), online journals and other sources.

There is some debate over whether E-ViTL should attempt to provide reference management functions, in addition to providing access to literature. Also whether it should be a repository for reference lists, rather than a portal to search distributed repositories. However, the purpose of this survey is to gather user requirements and, although it is unlikely that E-ViTL will be able to incorporate all possible requirements, your views will provide a useful pointer for future development.

Yours sincerely,

Charles Hussey,

Science Data Co-ordinator, Data and Digital Systems Team, Library and Information Services, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD United Kingdom