The International Plant Names Index: An Internet-Accessible Authority File of Scientific Names of Seed Plants Using Distributed Object Technologies

* 哈佛大学植物标本馆、皇家植物园、基尤和澳大利亚国家植物标本馆组成了一个联合体，称为植物名称项目（PNP），其目标是为所有种子植物（开花植物和“裸子植物”）的名称建立和维护一个全面的权威文件，并将其作为国际植物名称索引（IPNI）在互联网上免费提供。PNP正在开发跨大陆管理和编辑数据的基础设施，以保持这些IPNI权威文件的持续可用性和更新，并为依赖这些数据的科学家，公民和机构的广大受众提供透明的访问。国家科学基金会资助的一笔试点赠款促进了权威数据服务器（ADS）系统原型的开发，这是一个用Java实现的分布式对象基础设施，目前ADS节点位于堪培拉（澳大利亚）、伦敦（英国）和剑桥（美国）。根据目前的合同，研究人员将修改和扩大试点ADS系统，以包括目前在哈佛（剑桥，马萨诸塞州），基尤（英格兰）和堪培拉（澳大利亚）三个独立数据库中保存的大约140万个有效发表的种子植物学名。由于历史和技术的原因，以前只能以有限的格式向国际用户提供，而且费用很高。与其他项目，如堪萨斯大学的生物多样性和生物收集数据管理项目、美国生物信息基础设施CNBII的综合分类信息系统和密苏里州植物园的TROPICOS数据库相结合，将增加这些数据源对更多用户的效用。最后，使用来自哈佛模式标本数据库、树库和其他项目的数据子集，ADS系统将被用于探索和展示分布式对象方法在因特网上对与名称相关联的其他类型数据（如序言、模式图像、GIS数据和系统发育树）的分布的适用性。 ***

*** The Harvard University Herbaria, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Australian National Herbarium have formed a consortium called the Plant Names Project (PNP), whose goal is to create and maintain a comprehensive authority file for the names of all seed plants (flowering plants and "gymnosperms"), and make this freely available on the Internet as the International Plant Names Index (IPNI). The PNP is developing the infra-structure to manage and edit data across continents, to keep these IPNI authority files continuously available and updated, and to provide transparent access to the large audience of scientists, citizens, and institutions who rely on these data. An NSF-funded pilot grant facilitated the development of a prototype Authority Data Server (ADS) system, a distributed object infrastructure implemented in Java, with current ADS nodes in Canberra (Australia), London (England), and Cambridge (U.S.A.). Under the current award, the investigators will modify and expand the pilot ADS system to include the approximately 1.4 million effectively published scientific names of seed plants now held in three separate databases at Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Kew (England), and Canberra (Australia). For historical and technological reasons, these have been available previously only in limited formats and at high cost to international users. Integration with other projects, such as the Biodiversity and Biological Collection Data Management (OZ) project at the University of Kansas, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) of the U.S. Bio-logical Information Infrastructure CNBII), and the TROPICOS database at the Missouri Botanical Garden will increase the utility of these data sources to an expanded group of users. Finally, using subsets of data from the Harvard Type Specimen Database, Tree- BASE, and other projects, the ADS system will be used to explore and demonstrate the applicability of a distributed- objects approach for the Internet d istribution of other types of data linked to names, such as prologues, type images, GIS data, and phylogenetic trees. ***