[school-discuss] important new biology resource for teachers @ http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/manis/

[mike eschman <meschman@etc-edu.com>]

hello,

this is a classic example of how developing software to fill a real need
results in real and useful product development.

that happens less than 1 out of a hundred times in information technology,
and that (1% success rate) is a good bit higher than anything the eductation
community has any right to expect this century, judging by current results.

read on : 


http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/manis/

With support from the National Science Foundation, seventeen North American 
institutions and their collaborators are developing a network of distributed 
databases of mammal specimen data.  The objectives of this Mammal Networked 
Information System (MaNIS) are to 1) facilitate open access to combined 
specimen data from a web browser, 2) enhance the value of specimen 
collections, 3) conserve curatorial resources, and 4) use a design paradigm 
that can be easily adopted by other disciplines with similar needs.  MaNIS is 
designed to achieve these objectives while avoiding both the long-term, 
external maintenance of a network and the centralized management of data.

Development of this networked information system addresses the urgent call for 
natural history museums to come together to build and support a biodiversity 
informatics infrastructure in an open, collaborative manner.  This combined 
store of biodiversity knowledge will allow the predictive use of these data 
to reveal patterns and processes of evolutionary and ecological phenomena 
that have not been apparent heretofore.  It also provides ready access to 
detailed knowledge about the earth's biodiversity as we face the challenges 
of the 21st century.

mike eschman, etc ...
-- 
(http://www.etc-edu.com ) Not just an afterthought ...