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

正在组织一次研讨会，以解决向研究人员、政策制定者、教育工作者和公众提供国家丰富的生物标本收藏中的广泛信息的问题。我们纳入了以下个人：(1)在国家博物馆和大学的藏品研究的许多方面具有经验；(2)其研究成果将受益于生物多样性观测站；(3)熟悉现有的数据库倡议及其实施；(4)代表主要国家博物馆藏品到较小的区域藏品和大学藏品。我们的重点一直是确定参与者，他们广泛和批判性地思考生物博物馆藏品的科学使命，并将发现和描述新物种的用户社区的不同需求和能力整合到一套连贯和可实现的目标中。为了实现这一目标，我们特意将重点放在熟悉新兴信息学和网络技术的在职科学家身上。他们将制定生物多样性观测站的目标和结构，以便能够有效和高效地制定技术细节。研讨会的报告将不迟于2004年2月以草稿形式提交给国家科学基金会，并于2004年5月以最后形式出版。该报告将分发给众多科学协会征求意见，并将在万维网上提供。此外，研讨会还将发表一篇或多篇科学论文，发表在主要期刊上。这种分类学上的“工具”对教育的影响是深远而广泛的。在正规教育方面，任何一所大学的学生都有可能在线上一堂来自世界权威机构的分类学课程，实时观看全国各地收藏的标本，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野外生物学家，并教育所有需要在自己的研究中识别物种的生物学家这样做。为政府组织或非政府组织工作的生物学家可以学习在网上识别不同的物种，方便他们自己的工作。K-12级别的教师以及有积极性的学生可以创造性地利用我们大量的分类学知识来建立新的课程和访问自然环境的新方式。这将有助于科学家和普通公众了解环境和了解他们所看到的，从而积极参与生物多样性清单，并有助于在利用和养护不同物种和栖息地方面制定政策和优先事项。

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..