[NHCOLL-L:111] NEODAT II Website

[Tom DiBenedetto]

The New Neodat II Website

The Neodat Project is pleased to announce the launching of our newly
redesigned website, providing a variety of new and upgraded services to
the Neotropical ichthyological community. Our new home is now running
from a powerful server at:

www.neodat.org.

Please replace all your bookmarks and links with this new name. We hope
that this name will provide a stable address for Neodat for the long
term and eliminate the need for any future changes. 

New Search Features--Our site now features a new web-based search
engine for museum records of Neotropical fish collections including
nearly 400,000 primary and 120,000 locality records from 24
institutions worldwide. We also offer access to 24 other ichthyological
search engines as well as continued support for the original Neodat
gopher engine.  The new central site also offers direct links to
participating institutions and links to a variety of news and resources
relevant to Neotropical ichthyology.

MAPS!--Any locality data that include latitude and longitude can now be
mapped onto hydrographic maps of Mexico, Central American and South
America. This powerful tool lets you see at a glance where species are,
and where there may be errors in locality data. It especially shows the
crucial need for geocoding, both of newly acquired specimens and
specimens already catalogued.  A geocoding initiative may be
forthcoming. 

Original descriptions and type specimens-The new Species Reference and
Types pages have a new, convenient interface that offers a searchable
database of references to the original descriptions of Neotropical fish
species, references to revisionary works, alternative names, and to
type specimens.

New Books On-Line--The Digital Literature Project pages, housed at the
American Museum of Natural History, provide scanned images of rare
historical works on systematic ichthyology. We currently offer nine
titles, including several book-length volumes, and the full text of 124
original species descriptions. Scott Schaefer (schaefer at amnh.org)
requests your help in providing or suggesting new titles for the rare
literature collection.

Decentralization of Neodat--We have advanced our goal of decentralizing
the project by establishing three Neodat sites in Brazil, now all
serving their own data, independent of the central server. These sites
are: MNRJ - the Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro
(http://www.mnrj.ufrj.br/), MCP - the Museu de Ciencias e Tecnologia,
Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul
(http://ictio.pucrs.br), and INPA - the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas
da Amazonia (http://curupira.inpa.gov.br/col/vert/peixe/neodat/). We
have designed a common look and feel for all these sites to increase
ease of use.  At this time, searching of Neodat sites must be done
individually; searching the central server as well as these independent
sites will provide you with the most up-to-date data available.  
Timely updates at the central server will be possible due to a new
procedure allowing curators of participating museums direct access to
their records in our database.

Mailing Address-Inquiries, comments, and other suggestions can be sent
to the Neodat Project at neodat at umich.edu

The Inter-Institutional Database of Fish Biodiversity in the Neotropics
(NEODAT) is an international cooperative effort to make available
systematic and geographic data on Neotropical freshwater fish specimens
deposited in natural history collections in the New World and Europe.
The Project is funded by National Science Foundation grants to the
University of Michigan (UMMZ), the American Museum of Natural History
(AMNH) and the University of New Orleans (UNO).






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