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

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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..