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- Primary Actor
- most likely an individual researcher, ecologist or taxonomist, or an entity intending to view concepts, connections (synonymy, parent/child relations), and statuses according to a particular source of information that the SEEK Taxon database makes available.
This acticity will often precede queries of the SEEK Taxon database, requesting the display of concepts in response to names. Depending on the "preferred view" selected by a user, the database will return a broader or narrower set of concepts matching a name, provided by one or more sources, and (possibly) taking advantage of "expert-made" and/or probabilistically calculated matches. The selection of a "preferred view" will also determine what kinds of connections among concepts (synonymy, parent/child relations) are displayed.
- The SEEK Taxon database will eventually store (or at least connect to) taxonomic concept information from a variety of providers. Each of these internally coherent sets of concepts should be listed somewhere as a unit and described briefly, almost like a taxonomic metadata service. This would allow users to make an informed selection prior to submitting queries (see Examples). There should also be "defaults" or recommendations that SEEK makes for particular users.
- The Primary Actor initiates a query session with the SEEK Taxon database and can indicate his or her research interest, e.g. "ecologists" or "taxonomist".
- As a second step, the SEEK Taxon database now displays a listing of sets of "default" taxonomic sources (primarily for ecologists), or a more sophististicated listing of sources, each annotated with comments on the origin (e.g. primary taxonomic literature vs. authoritative summaries like USDA Plants), taxonomic and geographic scope ("mosses", "Germany"), and how much concept-related information is stored (connections, specimens, diagnoses).
- The users can then specify that the concepts matching the subsequent name query will come from one or more sources, and initiate the query.
- An ecologist wants to identify appropriate concepts that should link to the taxonomic names currently present in her ecological data set of North American hickory trees, as part of the process of submitting that data set to SEEK. She indicates that she is an ecologist (coming out of Morpho, this step might be automated), and then selects the taxonomic concept source "USDA Plant List Version 2003" from a listing of SEEK-recommended "defaults". Her subsequent query of concepts matching the name "shagbark hickory" returns concepts only from that source.
- A taxonomist is interested in viewing (and possibly editing) hickory tree concepts "from taxonomists, for taxonomists" stored in the SEEK Taxon database. Upon indicating his interests, he views a listing of appropriately described sources, including various versions of the Flora of North America Monograph Series, complete with detailed concept diagnoses. He selects all of them as sources for his subsequent concept query for the name "shagbark hickory".
If the initial selection of "preferred views" turns out to be too narrow or too broad (i.e. no or too many concepts returned), the user should be able to make adjustments and submit another query.
- It could occur that the Primary Actor makes various "nested" selections at the same time. With the possibility in mind that there could be multiple sets of connections (synonymy, parent/child relations) and statuses resting on top of a single set of core taxonomic concepts, a user may for example select one set of core concepts (e.g. USDA Plant List Version 2003) and multiple sets of statuses (e.g. USDA, and also ITIS and NatureServe).
None (yet).
Perhaps a standard template for describing the core attributes of taxonomic sources linked to the SEEK Taxon database, e.g. "covers all North American vascular plants", "includes synonymy relations as taken from FNA 1997 and checked by an expert", etc. This would help advertise these sources to users and make their selections easier.
This activity will be involved in many work flows that include queries.
- 25 March 2004
- (NMF) Use Case created (somehow) from previous Word document.
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