Hello all:
 
I am crying help about a topic I am interested in and, I believe, it may
be of interest to some of the people who are beginning to classify
shells.
 
Now I have several books and, to facilitate the classification task, I
am writing the information I have in PageMaker files, one for each
family; I put the families of a superfamily in the same folder; for each
species I make a summary of the differents descriptios and I attach the
pictures I have; I do that only for the Venezuelan species or in the
Caribe sea that I think have a chance to exist in Venezuela; until now I
have studied Neritacea, Cymatiidae and Bursidae of Cymatiacea, and
Olividae.
 
This is a work that I do not know wether I will end some day, but it
helps me in several ways, helps me to understand the descriptions and
the words used, to understand better the caracteristics used to
classify, and I have the information in a place. With more books and
more information this work is going to be impossible, at least for all
the families. But I feel free to change the objectives and the methods
when I like it. But...
 
Now I have several books and also have several differnt systems of
classification; not only at the species level, but to the family and
superfamily level; for example, Colubrariidae is included in Cymatiacea
of the Taeinoglossa and it is also included in Buccinacea of the
Stenoglossa. Now I am in Volutacea and several families of this
superfamily (in a book) appear in new superfamilies in other books:
Mitridae and Cancellariidae went to Mitracea, Conidae and others went to
Conacea, etc. Some genera that (in a book) belong to Volutacea, in other
book are in Buccinacea.
 
I undertand that, with the pass of the years, new observations and new
revisions change the classification, and that the more recent books tend
to present a better one. But I also understand that there must exist
several schools or groups of people wihch prefer one or other
classification system, and that they anchor to one's own and defend it
against the objection o criteria of other groups; but I do not know
wether a difference is due to time or to school; it is important to take
account of a change due to time, but a difference due to different
opinions is better put to rest until they (the zoologists) agree.
 
I would like to know about the principal systems of clasification that
exist; I think that this knowlegment is going to help me to wade across
this difficulties facilitating the distintion between differences due to
time and to school.
 
I thanks a lot to all people that answer this; thanks
Chao
Emilio.