Interesting concept, Art. Eventually, computers can not only make it easier
to look up and summarize data on species, but also to identify them
automatically. This is already done to some degree with microfossils in the
more high-tech petroleum companies.

I can foresee problems, however. Not everyone will have access to computers
for a long time, so people will continue to churn out new species in paper
journals without a complete check of previous literature. The "have"
scientists do help the "have-not" scientists on a personal basis, and
students' library research is often heavily subsidized at universities. But
it's still more difficult to be a scientist in Tannu Tuva than in Chicago.

The problem of rare literature will not be helped much by computers for a
long time. At present, only a few malacologists have access even to a large
fraction of the literature. There is virtually no economic incentive to
transfer rarely used literature to electronic form. Even so, the transfer
only has to be done once per article, so the number of electronically
available works will increase over time. Just don't hold your breath
waiting for the day.

Computers are great for holding and manipulating vast amounts of data, but
they are still very stupid, and someone has to enter the data at one end
and analyze it at the other. Most of you probably have no idea what the
extinction of the Secretary has done to science, but I know. I'm at both
ends of this procedure, and my productivity has decreased as a result.

Also, I would like to point out that having a computer, at least for now,
does not make it easier to collect or identify shells, nor can it
understand observations of the natural history of mollusks. There is still,
despite every innovation, so much science that can be done with no more
than pencil, paper, and the naked eye.

Andrew K. Rindsberg
Geological Survey of Alabama