Algorithms for connecting scientific names with literature in the Biodiversity Heritage Library via the Global Names Project and Catalogue of Life

Being able to quickly find and access original species descriptions is essential for efficiently conducting taxonomic research. Linking scientific name queries to the original species description is challenging and requires taxonomic intelligence because on average there are an estimated three scientific names associated with each currently accepted species, and many historical scientific names have fallen into disuse from being synonymized or forgotten. Additionally, non-standard usage of journal abbreviations can make it difficult to automatically disambiguate bibliographic citations and ascribe them to the correct publication. The largest open access resource for biodiversity literature is the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), which was built by a consortium of natural history institutions and contains over 200,000 digitized volumes of natural history publications spanning hundreds of years of biological research. Catalogue of Life (CoL) is the largest aggregator of scientific names globally, publishing an annual checklist of currently accepted scientific names and their historical synonyms. TaxonWorks is an integrative web-based workbench that facilitates collaboration on biodiversity informatics research between scientists and developers. The Global Names project has been collaborating with BHL, TaxonWorks, and CoL to develop a Global Names Index that links all of these services together by finding scientific names in BHL and using the taxonomic intelligence provided by CoL to conveniently link directly to the page referenced in BHL. The Global Names Index is continuously updated as metadata is improved and digitization technologies advance to provide more accurate optical character recognition (OCR) of scanned texts. We developed an open source tool, “BHLnames,” and launched a restful application programming interface (API) service with a freely available Javascript widget that can be embedded on any website to link scientific names to literature citations in BHL. If no bibliographic citation is provided, the widget will link to the oldest name usage in BHL, which often is the original species description. The BHLnames widget can also be used to browse all mentions of a scientific name and its synonyms in BHL, which could make the tool more broadly useful for studying the natural history of any species.

Adding Taxonomic Dimensions to the Scientific Names Index in the Biodiversity Heritage Library via Integration with the Catalogue of Life

The most significant specialized and open resource for biodiversity literature is the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). BHL contains more than 200,000 volumes that cover hundreds of years of biological publications. The Catalogue of Life (CoL) is the largest aggregator of global taxonomic information. The Global Names project collaborates with BHL and CoL to create a BHL scientific names index that is continuously improved. The index allows researchers to conveniently find relevant information about any name. Building a scientific names index is challenging because scientific names are quite dynamic and can dramatically change in taxonomic meaning over time. According to our estimates, on average, there are three scientific names per species. Also, a significant number of scientific names have fallen into disuse. For example, approximately 25% of names used in Zoology between 1750–1850 and collected by Charles Sherborn into Index Animalium disappeared from current nomenclatural and taxonomic databases. It is important, therefore, to add "taxonomic intelligence" to BHL names index search and present not only data about a specific name-string but also about all known synonyms so that all relevant information in BHL can be consolidated and conveniently accessed from taxonomic information aggregators like CoL. We developed an open source program "bhlnames", which creates a two-way bridge between the Catalogue of Life and Biodiversity Heritage Library. It provides the location of information in BHL about a taxon, using all names associated with the taxon according to Catalogue of Life synonymy data. Using that information, it attempts to provide CoL with a BHL link to the first descriptions of scientific names in the literature.

Affordances, remediation, and digital mourning: A comparative case study of two AIDS memorials

The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt is a collaborative project that memorializes individuals who have died of AIDS-related causes. Since its inception, it has become the world’s largest public folk art project. Scholars have noted the Quilt’s materiality, scope, and cultural importance to collective memory processes related to HIV/AIDS. More recently, discussions of collective memory in the digital public sphere have attracted attention from new media theorists and memory scholars alike. @theAIDSmemorial (TAM) is an Instagram account that serves as a digital repository for a new form of connective memory. By assessing two AIDS memorials as comparative cases, this research argues that TAM’s digital affordances of interactivity and reach are evident, although in assessing the digital remediation of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, the materiality, metaphoric origins, and scope of the Quilt cannot be rendered on digital platforms, representing a loss in affective engagement.

In Memoriam: Peter A.S. Smith

Peter Smith (1920-2014), from the Chemistry Department of the University of Michigan, was a member of the Commission on Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry (III.1) from 1979-1991. He was an Associate Member 1979-83, a Titular Member 1983-91, and chair 1987-91. As chair of the Class Names project, he was an author of "Glossary of class names of organic compounds and reactive intermediates based on structure. Recommendations 1995",

Absent Bodies: The AIDS Memorial Quilt as Social Melancholia

Far from being apolitical, self-indulgent or ineffective, as was suggested by some in the activist community, the NAMES Project Quilt became a symbol of the decimation of AIDS and a beacon for those in the AIDS-affected community, and challenged and transformed public attitudes towards people with AIDS. The NAMES Project Quilt risked sanitizing and homogenizing the particularities of the deceased, but I shall argue that the spectacle of the quilt changed public opinion through its mechanisms of publicity and meaning-making. Building on Michael Warner's notion of the ‘Mass Subject’, the quilt, I will suggest, transformed the mainstream, effectively forcing the formerly abject AIDS-affected community into public consciousness through the mechanisms of mass media.

Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics

This book provides an interpretative guide to using a fundamental resource for the study of the ancient Greek world. Personal names are a statement of identity, a personal choice by parents for their child, reflecting their own ancestry and family traditions, and the religious and political values of the society to which they belong. The names of the ancient Greeks, surviving in their tens of thousands in manuscripts and documents, offer a valuable insight into ancient Greek society. The chapters collected here examine how the Greeks responded to new environments. They draw out issues of identity as expressed through the choice, formation, and adaptation of personal names, not only by Greeks when they came into contact with non-Greeks, but of others in relation to Greeks, for example Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, and Semitic peoples, including the Jewish communities in the diaspora. Grounded in the ‘old’ world of Greece (in particular, Euboia and Thessaly), the book also reaches out to the many parts of the ancient world where Greeks travelled, traded, and settled, and where the dominant culture before the arrival of the Greeks was not Greek. Reflecting upon the progress of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names project, which has already published the names of over a quarter of a million ancient Greeks, it will be of interest to scholars and students of the language, literature, history, religion, and archaeology of the ancient Greek world.