This a quick writeup of an analysis I did to make the case that the list of names held by the Index of Organism Names (ION) (part of Thomson Reuters) would be very useful for GBIF. I must declare a bias, in that I've spent a good chunk of the last 3-4 years exploring the ION database and investigating ways to link the taxonomic names it contains to the primary taxonomic literature, culminating in building BioNames.

Ideas on measuring the "impact" of a natural history collection have been bubbling along, as reflected in recent comments on iPhylo, and some offline discussions I've been having with David Blackburn and Alan Resetar.