Just so the task will not be entirely thankless, the coordinating author of
the remaining Gastropoda volumes of the "Treatise on Invertebrate
Paleontology" is Warren D. Allmon. Dr. Allmon is also the Director of the
Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, New York, which, if memory
serves, holds the sixth largest collection of invertebrate fossils in the
United States.
 
The editor of the Treatise is currently Roger Kaesler, Paleontological
Institute, University of Kansas, Lawrence. The first editor of the Treatise
was Raymond C. Moore; the first volume was published in 1952 or so. Most
groups of invertebrates have been covered, and several volumes have been
revised or are now undergoing revision. Dr. Kaesler estimates that 6 to 8
years of work by a team of authors are required to complete a volume, and
that is not counting authors who procrastinate, or who die before
completing their work.
 
The intent for the mollusk volumes is to include all genera whether fossil
or living. Work on the Gastropoda volumes has been underway for several
years, and will take a long time to complete. Snails comprise a large
fraction of the animal kingdom, so this part of the Treatise will be housed
in several volumes. There is some talk about developing an electronic
database that can be updated continuously.
 
Authors are not paid or reimbursed for this work. To revise a family, an
author must see as many type specimens as possible (either by loan through
the mail, or in person at museums) and review all the published literature
(again, by interlibrary loan and visits to libraries). The author
reorganizes the family according to uniform taxonomic criteria, writes
elegantly brief descriptions of each genus in a standardized format, and
provides photographs of each genus, preferably of the types. This is an
enormous amount of labor, and a considerable expense, and it may take years
to complete all the visits and loans. However, authorship is well
publicized and credited (at least within the profession), and the resulting
book is of lasting value. An author gains respect among his or her
colleagues by writing for the Treatise, and this can be translated into
grants or career opportunities. Also, the author has the satisfaction of
knowing that his or her ideas will become standard, because they are put in
a standard reference work that will not be revised for decades.
 
Treatise volumes are produced at a surprisingly low cost considering the
value of the information within them. They are published by an agreement
between the Geological Society of America and the University of Kansas
Press, neither of which are run by stockholders mad for quarterly profits.
Volumes are reprinted when they go out of print. It's an impressive
achievement by a collaboration that has lasted for 50 years and is still
producing new work.
 
Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA