Facebook for Natural Historians? This is getting silly...

Article: "Darwin Meets Facebook: Social Networking Tool Lets Natural Historians Share Data" from ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2009).

As with other types of data we have mentioned this semester, curating biological data is a challenge. Apparently, taxonomic data (which is data about the classification of living things) has grown in volume over the years, while the number of taxonomic experts has decreased, and researchers have found it increasingly more difficult to find, access, and publish taxonomic data. To help with these problems, the idea for a social networking tool for natural historians to share their data was born. This tool, called Scratchpads, is being developed by researchers at the Natural History Museum of London.

Scratchpads got its name because it “reflects the fact that taxonomy is in a state of 'perpetual beta', constantly changing and reforming to reflect our current knowledge of a particular group.” The sites and “virtual workbenches” users create act as online notepads; the goal of Scratchpads is that users will work together to 'scratch out' their ideas and share taxonomic information. Scratchpad sites provide an open access to data in ways that traditional publications can’t.

Scientists and researchers can use Scratchpads to manage information about classifications, phylogenies, bibliographies documents, image galleries, custom data, specimen records, and even maps. Registration is free for any interested scientist; all that is needed to use scratchpads is to complete a registration form.

As far as technology is concerned, Scratchpads uses a Content Management System called Drupal, which provides the underlying architecture that Scratchpads relies on. Drupal allows Scratchpads to offer features such blogs, collaborative authoring, forums, peer-to-peer networking, newsletters, picture galleries, file uploads and downloads, and more.

The goal of Scratchpads is to be user-friendly and encourage users to generate, organize, and share their data. According to the Scratchpads website, its “infrastructure combines databases, network protocols and computational services to bring people, information and computational tools together to perform and publish natural history.” Scratchpads can help users collaborate via the web on projects that might have taken individual users a lifetime to complete alone by providing a space on the web for “communities to bring taxonomic information together without the limitations of traditional paper based publications.”

I blogged recently about the Facebook for Scientists which is being funded by the NIH. Now with Scratchpads, we apparently have a Facebook for Natural Historians. I’m not sure how I feel about this. The name is cute, and the idea is trendy, but how truly useful is this? On one hand, it is great that researchers are trying to collaborate and spread open access to information, but at the same time it feels like people keep trying to reinvent the wheel, developing similar projects that will probably fail to live up to expectations.