RE: BIOSIS/ZR to be sold?

[Tom Moritz <tmoritz@amnh.org>]

David makes valid points concerning the future of BIOSIS -- and having
last year been part of a special "vision session" they held at the
Philadelphia HQ's I'm sensitive to the dilemma they face...

My concerns however focus more on Zoological Record than on BIOSIS... ZR
has been (since 1864) the database of record for the zoological community
-- and more specifically for the systematics/organismic biology
community... The original model for ZR -- under the aegis of the
Zoological Society of London -- was broad community participation with
designated scientists taking responsibility for annual compilations of
bibliographic citations (and new or revised names of animals) within
specific taxon groups...

I have for more than 10 years been working with IUCN (The World
Conservation Union) toward developing access to biodiversity information
by developing countries, conservation organizations and other concerned
stakeholders.

For several years, I have been advocating a role for the full
retrospective conversion of ZR as a core dataset for the global
"Biodiversity Commons" -- an early expression of the concept can be seen
at:   http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june02/moritz/06moritz.html

And we -- at AMNH Library -- have been working (under a very modest grant
from the North American Biodiversity Information Network of the (North
American) Commission on Environmental Cooperation ) with the Creative
Commons at Stanford to evolve a set of licenses that might be used by
publishers to submit there publications to use with a "commons" framework.

While the United States (among all other countries of the world!) is still
not a signatory to the international Convention on Biological Diversity
(SEE: www.biodiv.org/ ) The convention calls for the "repatriation of
information" (Article 17) -- and every nation in the world has reporting
obligations on the status of their national biodiversity that are
(obviously) tied to the existing knowledge base of the organismic biology
community.

The TAXACOM internet list (TAXACOM@LISTSERV.NHM.KU.EDU ) has supported a
thread on this theme (to review this discussion please see:
http://www.usobi.org/archives/taxacom.html ) and there is discussion there
of how a distributed community model for supporting Zoological Record
might evolve...

Tom Moritz                              	212-769-5417
Boeschenstein Director, Library Services        212-769-5009 - FAX
American Museum of Natural History              tmoritz@amnh.org
79th St. @ Central Park West                    http://library.amnh.org/
New York, New York  10024                       (Time:  GMT -5)
USA


At 11:07 AM 10/22/2003 -0400, David Goodman wrote:
>There are certainly a number of questions, and the first is whether this
>sale, or a sale to one of the possible other candidates, is essential to
>the future of Biosis/ZR.
>
>Personally, I think that it is. Viewed from outside, there seems to have
>been a serious decline in the number of institutions receiving the
>complete Biosis-ZR package.
>
>Many ARL libraries, even some near the top of the ARL rankings and with
>very extensive biology programs and with generally excellent libraries do
>not. The price has apparently become unaffordable for even these
>libraries; smaller libraries are not even in the market. And, to quote
>from a recent posting on this list:
>
>  "Outsell data from our Pharmaceutical Industry benchmarks
>   shows that BIOSIS, while a key source for information
>   professionals, has a relatively low level of penetration to end-user
>   desktops."
>
>My experience in higher education is similar.
>
>The very large proportion of material which is indexed equally well on
>Medline, widely available in free or inexpensive versions, may be a factor
>here. I have heard changing this discussed at Biosis for many years; it
>remains.
>
>This has been accompanied by a decline in searchability. Some of the
>recent changes in the database have not been positive. The merge of the
>excellent ZR taxonomic data into the much less excellent BA taxonomic
>framework, the inability to search the complete run with a single set of
>controlled subject terms, and the incredible deliberate failure of BA to
>include genus-species names unless mentioned in the title or abstract or
>otherwise prominent are all features that handicap serious use.
>
>Nonetheless it remains essential in many fields of biology. Much of the
>content is not in Medline; much of it is not in Web of Science (which in
>any case lacks controlled indexing). Future generations of classical
>biologists, and ecologists -- anyone who works outside the parts of
>biology covered by Medline (or ChemAbs, or Agricola, etc.) will be under
>an incredible handicap if controlled biological and especially taxonomic
>indexing does not survive.
>
>The second is whether Thompson-ISI is a suitable partner. (Certainly the
>pricing policies of Web of Science give one pause.) I would hope their
>negotiations recognized the price limitations for these products. The
>great advantage of them as a partner is the location--it ensures that the
>excellent indexing staff and other technical staff at Biosis will be able
>to remain; both organizations are in Philadelphia. It is also true that
>there would have been problems with some of the other organizations that
>have been mentioned from time to time as possible purchasers: would its
>prospects be better and its price likely to be more reasonable if bought
>by Chemical Abstracts or Elsevier? (I have no personal knowledge, btw, of
>whom the other actual possibilities may have been.)
>
>Yes, I would have preferred Biosis to have continued as a strong,
>progressive, rapidly-adapting independent organization. But as it does not
>seem to have been able to, this may be the next best. It remains for us as
>biological information specialists to try to ensure that we and our
>biology patrons give sufficient input to see that the changes are in the
>right direction, and that the usefullness of this database is not only
>maintained, but improved.
>
>Dr. David Goodman
>dgoodman@liu.edu