Using the Model of uBio

"The chief librarian at the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole created uBio as a way to make sense of and allow for the different opinions and classifications that scientists give to the same species.

Are there other information resources that use this model? Does Wikipedia?

What ideas do you have for using this model to create similar information resources that might help us see the many different connections between bits of information in the digital age?"

Hmmm....I think I already shared my idea of using uBio's model in my post about the fish poster. Primitive, yes, definitely not digital; but very effective. Digitalizing it would not have made it any more useful to the local population because the internet and electric are so unreliable.

So, from roaming through the uBio site, it's obvious that the sources it uses are authenticated, even though they don't always agree on the taxonomic structure of a particular organism. My little experiment had no such controls, but it was practical.

Wikipedia does use this model, but the sources don't have to be professionals in any particular field, and the data is not peer-reviewed, so the information that Wikipedia gathers is open to fraud and inaccuracies. Nevertheless, it is still very useful, as long as one keeps in mind that it might be entirely inaccurate. It's always wise to check out the reference links included in wikipedia articles, since they often lead you to the root source.

A similar data-gathering effort is the Foxfire project. It would be fascinating to digitalize and create metadata about the information garnered in the Foxfire project, because indexing, cataloguing, and mapping each individual subject would lead to a huge body of practical (yet little-known in the U.S. these days) information and folklore. That would be my dream job.