Description: With changes in technology and a renewed effort to catalog the world's biodiversity, huge amounts of data are being generated on biodiversity issues. As response to the call for better information systems to manage the biodiversity crisis, a wide range of solutions are being developed for inventorying, managing, and disseminating taxonomic data. This book brings together a diverse array of authors, expertise, and assessors that discuss technical developments to improve the construction, population, and dissemination of biodiversity information. It is designed to inform students and researchers of biodiversity about the changes and challenges that need to be understood by everyone in this information age.
Review Quotes:
I recommend Biodiversity Databases' to anyone who is looking for a good entry point into the field of biodiversity informatics, with the qualification that the reality of data integration might be more "lively" than some chapters let on.
--The Systematist, 2010
"... addresses many of the new features of the types of databases now in service and make cases for even more improvements. They focus on best practices and applications as they describe concepts and installations..."
--SciTech Book News
"This book is indispensable for those who would build or use an electronic repository of taxonomic information previously contained only in such analog formats as herbaria or specimen labels, mapping projects, tissue culture collections, etc. This work will also be of value to natural history researchers wishing to contribute to the global effort to document species diversity by gathering the primary data that goes into or is used by the various biodiversity databases . . . Summing Up: Recommended."
- K. A. Newman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in Choice: Current Review for Academic Libraries, November 2007, Vol. 45, No. 3