[Taxacom] Taxonomy in Europe in the 21st century

Wed May 7 09:05:21 CDT 2008

If my life history is archetypal, this is nearly the last chance to use the
bridging skills from my generation of taxonomists and systematists.

I was lucky enough to have been a "Sputnik Kid" botanist who was introduced
to the subject in 1963 by Dr. Joseph Miller Wood of Columbia, Missouri.  I
went on to The University of Michigan as Drs. Warren H. Wagner, Jr.
Frederick K. Sparrow, William Randolph Taylor, Chester A. Arnold, Rogers
McVaugh, Edward Groesbeck Voss, Alexander Smith, and more were nearing
retirement.  These were pretty much as good as it gets in the practice of
legacy systems of their day.

Noting that botanists seldom die and go on working until finally they do
die, I dropped out and used computer skills to climb in that arena.  Then
returned to school in librarianship with the hope of melding these three
areas, which I consider incredibly important for the reasons you all list.
But there is no way to enter this closed area.  It is as closed to classic
systematics as it was in the mid 70's when "molecular biology" displaced
classical biology.  At Michican, Botany and Zoology were consumed by the
Department of B.S.  Was that portentious?   I was one of those cheering
nucleic acid-level systematics on, and I saw many of my fellow graduate
students becoming professors (deservedly).  I had lost my interest in
classical systematics, but failed to see its upcoming need in uniting
population and lab strain informatics with the huge information stores of
the past.

Now, secure in a well-paying but non-research position, what can I
contribute?  Again, I am "unwanted" in an area that desperately needs work.
There must be many like myself who are still young enough to be of cogent
utility.  Some, like me, must be willing to again shift metiers, but we have
to survive. It seems that the "classical" DNA biologists will be considered
old-fashioned by the bleeding-edge proteomists, virologists, etc., soon.
Who will tend the "already-known?"

The case needs to be made for integrated information access across many
disciplines and the high cost of neglecting this.  Why do only a few centers
work on semantic retrieval of natural history, nomenclatorial, systematic,
genetic, developmental, ..., information when there is so much to discover?
It is heartbreaking, considering the corps of work so many have produced!

I feel like I ranted on here, but time is running out.  In twenty years we
will be gone.  Twenty years is but a moment.

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 5:32 AM, Gael Lancelot <lancelot at mnhn.fr> wrote:

> Dear TAXACOMers,
>
> As we all know, taxonomy is at a crossroads. As the most fundamental of
> life sciences, is more vital than ever to our understanding and management
> of biodiversity. Societal changes and new technologies currently lead to
> fast and deep-ranging transformations in taxonomic science.
>
> To plan for the future, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy has
> gathered prominent researchers in the relevant fields as well as young
> scientists, all with an established production of excellent research. They
> have produced a scientific vision for the future of taxonomy in the next 10
> to 20 years. This report, *"Taxonomy in Europe in the 21^st Century",* is
> now released for discussion in the scientific community and general public.
> It is available at the following address:
> http://ww2.bgbm.org/EditDocumentRepository/Taxonomy21report.pdf
>
> The overall conclusions of the report are:
>
>   * That taxonomy faces exciting challenges and opportunities in the
>     future to meet the demand for an ever more profound understanding
>     of the diversity of life on this planet, how it developed and the
>     impact of increasingly destructive human activity including
>     climate change, factors that are predicted to have an enormous
>     negative influence on the diversity and distribution of
>     biodiversity (the biodiversity crisis)
>   * Pivotal to the development of taxonomy are the rapidly expanding
>     fields of high throughput DNA sequencing, automated digital
>     data-gathering and biodiversity informatics. Incorporating these
>     technologies will be critical to the science of taxonomy.
>   * Scientific collaborators and users of taxonomy will require new
>     ways of working and interacting with taxonomists. It is essential
>     that taxonomists and their users respond to this need. Taxonomists
>     integrated into interdisciplinary teams will be an essential way
>     of working.
>   * Although an ever expanding repertoire of theoretical and practical
>     tools is available to taxonomists, unheralded in the history of
>     the subject, there will have to be substantial, even radical,
>     changes in how taxonomy is done and its supporting infrastructure
>     operated, to exploit these opportunities to the full. "Business as
>     usual", even if scaled up, is simply not an option.
>
> The Board of Directors of EDIT, representing 27 major taxonomic
> institutions in and outside Europe, has approved this document as a
> scientific roadmap for future development of taxonomy in research, training
> and technology in the coming decades.
>
> More information on EDIT is available at http://e-taxonomy.eu <
> http://e-taxonomy.eu/>. Any questions or reactions will be welcome at
> lancelot at mnhn.fr <mailto:lancelot at mnhn.fr>.
>
> Thank you,
>
> --
> Gaël Lancelot
> Communication Officer
> European Institute of Taxonomy
> Tel: (0033)1 40 79 80 19
> lancelot at mnhn.fr
> http://e-taxonomy.eu
>
>
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>
>

-- 
William L. Graham, Digital Initiatives
University Library, Chicago State University
9501 South King Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60628-1598
WilliamLyleGraham at gmail.com
http://webs.csu.edu/~wgraham/