A Workshop:Development of a National Systematics Infrastructure: A Virtual Instrument for the 21st Century

目前正在组织一个讲习班，以解决向研究人员、决策者、教育工作者和公众提供国家大量生物标本收藏的广泛信息的问题。我们已经包括个人（1）谁在国家博物馆和大学的收藏为基础的研究的许多方面的经验，（2）其研究成果将受益于生物多样性观测站，（3）谁是熟悉现有的数据库计划及其实施（4）谁代表主要的国家博物馆收藏，以较小的区域收藏和大学为基础的收藏。 我们的重点一直是确定参与者谁认为广泛和批判性的科学使命的生物博物馆收藏和整合的不同需求和能力的用户社区的人发现和描述新物种到一个连贯的和可实现的目标。 为了实现这一目标，我们特意强调熟悉新兴信息学和网络技术的工作科学家。 他们将制定生物多样性观测站的目标和结构，以便切实有效地制定技术细节。 讲习班的报告草稿将不迟于2004年2月提交国家科学基金会，最后定稿将于2004年5月发表。 该报告将分发给许多科学学会征求意见，并将在万维网上公布。 此外，讲习班将产生一份或多份科学论文，供在主要期刊上发表。这种分类“工具”对教育的影响是深远而广泛的。 就正规教育而言，任何一所大学的学生都有可能参加世界权威机构的虚拟在线分类课，在真实的时间里看到来自全国各地的标本，并将这些标本与他们自己的观察结果进行比较。 这将有助于激励和教育新一代的野外生物学家，以及教育所有需要在自己的研究中识别物种的生物学家。 为政府组织或非政府组织工作的生物学家可以学习在线识别不同的物种，从而促进他们自己的工作。 在K-12水平的教师，以及积极的学生，可以创造性地使用我们的分类学知识的巨大存储建立新的课程和访问自然环境的新方式。 这将有助于提高科学家和公众了解环境和了解他们所看到的情况的能力，从而积极参与生物多样性的清查，并帮助制定使用和保护不同物种和生境的政策和优先事项。

A workshop is being organized to address the problems of making available to researchers, policy makers, educators and the general public the breadth of information in the vast wealth of the nation's collections of biological specimens. We have included individuals (1) who have experience in many aspects of collections-based research in the nations museums and universities, (2) whose research results would benefit from a biodiversity observatory, (3) who are familiar with existing database initiatives and their implementation (4) who represent major national museum collections to smaller regional collections and university based collections. Our emphasis has been to identify participants who think broadly and critically about the scientific mission of biological museum collections and who integrate the diverse needs and capabilities of user community of people discovering and describing new species into a coherent and achievable set of goals. To accomplish this, we have deliberately placed an emphasis on working scientists who are familiar with emerging informatics and cybertechnologies. They will develop the goals and structure for a biodiversity observatory so that the technical details can be effectively and efficiently developed. A report from the workshop will be submitted to NSF in draft form no later than February 2004 and published in final form by May 2004. The report will be distributed to numerous scientific societies for comment and will be made available on the World Wide Web. In addition, one or more scientific papers will be generated from the workshop for publication in leading journals. Implications for such a taxonomic "instrument" for education are profound and broad. In terms of formal education, students at any college could potentially take a virtual on-line taxonomic class from a world authority and see specimens in real time from collections across the country and compare these to their own observations. This would help to inspire and educate a new generation of field biologists, as well as educate all biologists who need to identify species in their own research to do so. Biologists working for a government organization or NGO could learn to identify diverse species on-line, facilitating their own work. Teachers at K-12 levels, as well as motivated students, could creatively use this vast store of our knowledge of taxonomy to build new curricula and new ways of visiting the natural environment. This will contribute to the ability of both scientists and the general public to understand the environment and know what they are seeing and, thus actively participate in the inventory of biodiversity and help establish policy and priorities in the use and conservation of different species and habitats..