>         I wish we could publish a lot more information about "namers" on our
> list. Many of their lives and expliots are fascinating. Someday, one
> would hope that one of the educational channels might do half hour
> features illustrating these people. It would be a great service to
> students now and in the future.

Whenever a malacologist shuffles off this mortal coil, their significance
in the scheme of things can be evaluated by the length of time it takes
someone to write a bibliography of their work. Not an obituary - everyone
gets one of those - but a proper bibliography with a list of new names and
a biography attached. These exist in print for almost all authors whose
outputs were more than negligible, and obtaining these books should be a
major priority for anyone building even a modest library. Just off the top
of my head, I can think of comprehensive bibliographies of the following by
the following :
A. A. Gould by R. I. Johnson (1964), W. H. Dall by Boss et al., and P.
Bartsch by F. Ruhoff (1973) all published by the Smithsonian; H. and A.
Adams (1992), J. R. Tomlin (1990), J. C. Melvill (including his work with
Standen) (1987) and E. A. Smith (1993), all by A. Trew (National Museum of
Wales); J. W. Mighels by R. I. Johnson (1949 : Occ. Papers in Moll., vol. 1
(14); Linnaeus by H. Dodge (1952-59, pub. AMNH New York); W. Turton and W.
Clark (1983 : Journ. Conch. vol. 31) and J. G. Jeffries by A. Waren; C. S.
Lischke by R.. v. Cosel (1998 : The Yuriyagai vol. 6); R. T. Abbott by M.
G. Harasewych (Nautilus) and T. Kuroda by the Hanshin Shell Club. There are
many more, including partial ones (T. Okutani up to 1986 (I think) and T.
Habe up to 1976 for example) and some are in preparation (E. von Martens
has just been done, though I can't remember by whom; I heard that Alison
Trew was doing all four Sowerbys, a mammoth task, but how far she got I
don't know), and we should all tip our collective hats to the authors of
these pivotal resource works.
These books are brilliant; they contain all the names created by the author
along with full bibliographical references, type localities and often the
current location of the type material. The really good ones also have
plates of the types, the most important thing one can include in shell
books. Most also contain a brief biography, which is always fascinating
reading. The best thing of all is that they are CHEAP. Considering the
amount of work involved in their compilation and their usefulness to even
beginner collectors, they are scandalously underpriced.
Another useful kind of book is the 'Collected Works'; facsimiles of the
original articles of a particular author, often with an index to the new
names. These exist for Monterosato, Oyama, Yokoyama and many others.

It would be nice to have an online bibliography of bibliographies - perhaps
there is one somewhere. It would be of great use to us all.