Kurt Auffenberg writes,
"Let's back the truck up a little.  Although the Compendium of Land shells
by Tucker Abbott is very useful for the collector and professional alike,
it is by no means a checklist of the land snails of the world.  I assume
this is the reference referred to by Andrew Rindsberg.  It only illustrates
a very small fraction of the known fauna, gives an adequate bibliography
and is riddled with errors (through no fault of Tucker's.  It's just the
nature of the beast . . . publishing a book is Hell, publishing a book on a
confusing group is a bigger Hell).  There is no checklist of the land
snails of the world, but there are several good people out there putting
together pieces of the puzzle."
 
Oops. Sorry to get folks excited about this. Mea culpa! I dashed that one
off without checking references first.
 
Incidentally, I forgot to mention one of the best sources of information
for compiling master lists of species: monographs of whole families. The
authors tend to aim for completeness, and winnow out synonyms. Of course,
the work can never be finished.
 
Gary Rosenberg tells us that more than 20,000 molluscan species have been
named in the past 20 years, showing that anyone who wants a complete
collection would have to acquire species at the rate of 3 or so every day.
It would be a major task just to acquire all of the literature containing
new descriptions, let alone specimens, even if they were available.
Clearly, nature has a few surprises still to spring on us.
 
He also stated that the Zoological Record won't do our work for us. Well,
before anyone (like Sylvia Edwards) makes plans to do the job by teamwork,
what other large lists of molluscan taxa, published or unpublished, are
available? And when an author plans a monograph of a whole family, how do
you make sure your list of species is complete? (No, me buckos, I am NOT
volunteering! I am already heavily engaged in compiling a complete list of
trace-fossil taxa, with collaborator Alfred Uchman. I'll be glad to cheer
you on, however.)
 
Thanks for the corrections.
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama