Dear conchlers,

I recently received a letter from Francisco Welter-Schultes from AnimalBase,
who asks the
scientific community for assistance in the endangered survival of the
AnimalBase project.
If you would like to help the project, please read the text below and send a
message to:
[log in to unmask]



Since 2003 the Library of Goettingen University has been digitizing
early zoological literature in cooperation with the Zoological
Institute. Nearly the complete zootaxonomically relevant literature
between 1551 and 1770 is now available to the public.
The genus and species level taxa described between 1757 and 1770
(some 10,000 taxa) were entered into a database (AnimalBase).
Digitized literature and taxa can be found online at
www.animalbase.org.

It is now sceduled to digitize more literature from between 1771 and
1800, and to enter some 50,000 taxa described in these works. The
project was financed by the German Science Foundation (the most
important public source for financing science in Germany). Now they
are asking themselves whether the project is useful for scientists
and should be continued for the period after 1770. Preliminarily they
have rejected our motion, based on reviewers who seemed to be
biologists, but did not even know the difference between genus and
species. Now reviews are demanded by persons who are able to give a
professional opinion.

It would be of great help if you could write a short review about
this project (not more than half a page, or 250 words), explaining
shortly in your own words whether the project makes sense or not. The
following points should serve as a guide.

1 - Is the AnimalBase project of Goettingen University for my own
work useful and necessary, and why? Is the project an enrichment for
science?

2 - Does it make sense to digitize such old literature? Is this
literature of any present-day significance, or outdated?

3 - Had it been sufficient to digitize the literature without
programming the AnimalBase database, and would specialists find
the literature also without AnimalBase?

4 - Does it make sense to enter the old taxa described
until 1800 directly from the original sources into a database, and to
provide links to the original literature?

5 - Does AnimalBase work properly? Is it possible and easy to find
animal names and literature in the database? Has the database been
correctly arranged for the intended functions?

6 - Academic position, city, and field in which I am specialized.

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