Note to self. The challenge of finding specimen citations in papers keeps coming around. It seems that this is basically the same problem as finding citations to papers, and can be approached in much the same way. If you want to build a database of reference from scratch, one way is to scrape citations from papers (e.g., from the "literature cited" section), convert those strings into structured data, and add those to your database.

Some interesting threads in TAXACOM today (yes, really). The following article has appeared in Science : The authors argue that "The availability of adequate alternative methods of documentation, including high-resolution photography, audio recording, and nonlethal sampling, provide an opportunity to revisit and reconsider field collection practices and policies." This has brought a swift response from Kevin Winkler (Re)affirming the

The Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) project aims to advance digitising US biodiversity collections. They recently published a GUID Guide for Data Providers. In the PDF document I read this: My heart sank.

This message appeared on the TAXACOM mailing list: Given that most specimens lack resolvable digital identifiers (a theme I've harped on about before, most recently in the context of DNA barcoding), answering this kind of query ends up being a case of searching publications for text strings that contain the acronym of the collection.

As part of the slow rebuild of bioguid.info, and as part of the Challenge, I've started making an OpenURL resolver for specimens. Partly this is just a wrapper around DiGIR providers, but it's also a response to the lack of GUIDs for specimens.