Oleg N. Pugachev1, Dmitry V. Geltman2 & Alexander Ryss1
1 Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Universitetskaya nab., 1, St Petersburg, 199034 Russia. admin@zin.ru
2 Botanical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Popova 2, St Petersburg, 197376 Russia
According to concepts proposed in the 1960s, the post-industrial society is transformed into its new stage, the “Information Society”, as a result of the development of modern technology tools. For hundreds of years, the role of fundamental research was the accumulation of new data and knowledge for the future progress of society. In the Information Society this knowledge starts to be easily accessible and usable not only by experts (scientific analysts), but by the entire society, for an extremely diverse spectrum of goals of economic and social development. This broad social feedback of scientific knowledge is the key-stone of the accelerated progress of modern society.
In the 1980s the Zoological Institute, the Botanical Institute, and the Moscow State University started creating databanks of the fauna and flora of Russia and the neighbouring countries. After developing the information retrieval systems, these were applied with the help of highly qualified taxonomists to create computer-aided identification tools for the most important animal and plant taxa. From 1995 on the Internet was introduced as the main telecommunication system for scientists in Russia, with the help of the Russian State program and support of the Russian Basic Research Foundation and the Ministry of Science and Technology the Zoological Institute, Botanical Institute, universities, and the institutions of the Academy of Sciences. This created the additional facilities: access to the international databases and use of the own data to develop the scientific, popular scientific, and educational resources.
The information system on the biodiversity of Russia (joined project supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology RF) is the complex of program tools and databases that is to operate the knowledge on the animal and plant world within the Russian segment of the global Internet. It combines the reference, educational and purely scientific facilities with broad access to the accumulated data. Different parts of the system are hosted by different servers of the biological scientific institutions of Russia, which are responsible to compile, update and verify the data on specific taxonomic groups using their highly qualified taxonomic experts. Collection blocks of the system are now under development.
The portal of the Zoological Institute has now 30 taxonomic websites, 22000 web pages, 15000 subject images, in total 1 GB of integrated information (excepting the databases volume).
Apart from on-line access, the data are distributed in regions on CDs and DVDs. This method is useful for computerized identification keys, educational programs and museums guides, while the Virtual Museums on the Internet are now under intensive development as one of the priorities.
Classical taxonomy is now in crisis because of the decrease in funding and the resulting worldwide shortage of staff working with collections, species identification, and biological nomenclature using classical methods. Taxonomists increasingly become the extinct species in modern science, which continues to need them as experts but does not want to feed them. The only solution may be to join our efforts on the base of the new information technology tools and create a broad and free scientific cooperation, equal in rights, mutually beneficial, multi-level: between individuals, institutions, government and non-governmental scientific bodies, both national and international.
Examples of such global cooperation networks where Russia is already involved are FishBase, the EDIT (European Distribution Institute for Taxonomy), and Fauna Europaea in perspective.
In total the Russian Internet has more than 100000 information resources devoted to science and education, and the science and society, which is an indication on the interests of the community and the real feedback of science and community in Russia. Among life science resources medicine is on the first place, while the biology and especially taxonomy as the human knowledge resource need to be developed (now only 10000 resources).
A simple estimation value of the feedback of the information systems with the scientific community is the number of visitors of the scientific websites. Statistics of the Zoological Institute website for 2004 count 12,000,000 visitors, 60% of them from Russia and former Soviet Union countries. Most popular websites are “Fauna of fleas” and “Beetles and coleopterologists”.