EDIT - European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy -

A workshop for professionals from outside the scientific taxonomic community, organised by EDIT, Royal Botanic Gardens - Kew & Natural History Museum, London. February 18-19, 2009 Hosted by Museo National de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid.

Results of the meeting

During the E-biosphere conference 2009 (http://www.e-biosphere09.org/) a summary of the meetings outcomes was presented in a poster presentation.

You can download the poster here (reduced format)

February 18-19, 2009 EDIT sponsored a workshop in Madrid on the uses of scientific names. This activity feeds into EDIT’s objective to contribute to the qualitative and qualitative expansion of taxonomic research and its uses. EDIT seeks to engage with different user communities to collect their views and experiences when using taxonomic information. One of the core “products” coming from the taxonomic community are scientific names for plants and animals and the relationships between them. These names are used by taxonomists themselves but also by conservation agencies, environmental assessment consultancies, agriculture, food and fishery departments, environmental studies, ecology; public health and veterinary research and many others.

EDIT would like to understand how professionals working outside of taxonomy use scientific names. The Madrid workshop had 14 participants from organisations that themselves build biodiversity resources and serve users in their own communities and yet depend themselves on names derived from taxonomists. The workshop sought to understand how participants use names, how they find and validate those names, what they like and dislike about current name services from the EDIT community, who their users (customers) are, what might be the impact of their using the wrong names ad how much effort is involved in their maintaining their own name lists?

Participants came from different professional backgrounds to work together during two days (list participating organizations in attachment below) and was run using participatory methodologies. Day 1 of the meeting focused on the delivery of names to the participants’ organisations by the taxonomic community. Participants answered on behalf of their organisation/team such questions as what are the obstacles of finding the right name; what improvements are needed and which would you prioritise for your organi sation? Day 2 focused more on how participants use names (the costs of managing names) and their stakeholders. The workshop generated detailed information on participants’ needs and how they work with names. The workshop also helped build a business case for taxonomic name services. These results will be published in a report (forthcoming) and made available through the EDIT website.