For centuries careful researchers and scholars have trusted in the stability of citations. Once a work was cited it was always, in principle, available to be checked and verified. Those centuries of reliance on the stability of citations is at an end. Two decades of academic literature now relies on dead links and vanished sources […]
Continue readingConfident Searching
One fundamental difference between Google, for example, and database searching is the question of privacy and confidentiality. Every keystroke entered into search engines whose business model is based on surveillance of its users is harvested and stored and disseminated for commercial, electoral and political purposes. Every discovery you make belongs to them. Even users’ medical […]
Continue readingMissing Information: Absolute Dates
One troubling loss from much of the internet is absolute dates, like March 15, 2019. Today’s date, actually. Instead, we are being given relative dates: 3 hours ago, 4 days ago, a month ago, a year ago. The obvious problem with this is that if a article or document is passed on, exactly when it […]
Continue readingNotes: Bioregions
The Question of Bioregions: One common question about the regionalization of our area studies databases is about the absence of the systematic use of biogeographic regions or Bioregions. (Biomes have the same problems we describe here for Bioregions.) This is something we have considered in detail and we do not attempt to classify every record, […]
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