XML Markup of Taxonomic Literature

John Aubry
Database Manager
American Museum of Natural History

Applications based on XML markup offer promising means of making new uses of the information stored in the taxonomic literature. Publications can be linked to specimen collections. Descriptions are being reused to create field guides. Specimen level data might be extracted from the published literature to stand as a surrogate for catalog data. Taxonomic descriptions might be assembled according to geography, habitat, ecological role, or other criteria different than the ones chosen by the original authors. All of these uses can be facilitated by the application of appropriate XML markup to the existing texts.

This session will explore some of the approaches under development by the American Museum of Natural History, and others, to develop tag sets and rules for markup of taxonomic literature that might support such applications.