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• Nomina 1
• Nomina 2
• Nomenclators workshops
• Nomina 3
• Nomina 4
• Nomina 5

Nomina 1

Nomina I (Feb 2007) assembled a group of taxonomic and nomenclatural data custodians. Discussions focused on the technical and social barriers to sharing data. Presented at the meeting was a key set of distinctions that form the basis of much of the GNA work. This is the distinction of three properties that taxonomic names present in the context of biodiversity informations.

1. Names are strings of characters that serve as labels that link biodiversity data objects to our understanding of taxonomy, the identity and relationships among taxa.
2. Names originate in published nomenclatural acts that provide the basic "words" of taxonomy. These words are governed by formal codes of nomenclature whose rules govern whether a name should be used or not.
3. Names are key components of taxon concepts, that provide "definitions" to taxonomic names through the use of circumscription information, the degree and basis of which may vary among sources.

It was agreed that a first step toward integration and collective purpose would be a dynamic index of taxonomic names treated within each data system tied to a link to the curated data record.

Nomina 2

Nomina II followed in April of 2008. It had two components.

• An initial meeting included custodians and representatives from taxonomic and nomenclatural databases. This meeting re-assessed the outcomes of the Nomina I meeting and discussed overall scope and direction of the Global Names Architecture. An ad-hoc advisory panel, the Global Names Architecture Advisory Panel, was formed.

• A second technical workshop focused on developing the technical specifications and draft components for developing the collective index discussed at Nomina 1. The initial draft implementation was then refactored into the Global Names Index. The focus of the GNI is to address various impediments presented by the "names-as-strings" property of taxonomic names.

Nomenclators workshops

A series of meetings followed that focused on the nomenclatural aspects of names. The utilisation and application of nomenclatural data within biodiversity informatics was identified. From these potential services were discussed and a rationale was established for evaluating a roadmap that would provide a unified, virtual nomenclatural system for all organism names. Two meetings in Paris engaged the major nomenclatural databases and a specific focus was made to identify strategies for populating the largest yet least advance nomenclatural databases: ZooBank.

Nomina 3

Nomina III occurred in Oct 2008 and continued the focus on nomenclatural databases. This meeting evaluated methodologies for reconciling the wide range of orthographic variation among scientific names that inhibits data integration. It also refined the concept of a single nomenclatural data index that would collate nomenclatural acts across all the nomenclatural codes, effectively addressing one of the major challenges within taxonomy of unifying the codes of nomenclature and doing so by skirting the need for unification entirely. This led to the development and support of the GNUB project.

Nomina 4

Nomina IV returned to addressing many of the technical challenges in processing taxonomic names. One objective was to coordinate and collate multiple overlapping initiatives and establish standard methods and evaluation procedures, create shared tests, dictionaries and code, and establish reference implementations of many of the core technologies. Nomina 4 resulted in the creation of the Taxon Name Processing project

Nomina 5

Nomina V focused on refining the use of taxonomic data in federated biodiversity data management. Many practical challenges face aggregators of biodiversity data. Initiatives such as GBIF, the Biodiversity Heritage Library, OBIS, EoL, and many others, access data records that reference species information that may span a wide temporal and taxonomic range. These data may be tied to multiple and sometimes conflicting taxonomic concepts or may provide little taxonomic information beyond the use of a scientific name. This results in a range of problems in trying to effectively integrate and serve these data.

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This sets the stage for the logical ambitions of the GNA

1. To accelerate the discovery of all names used in biodiversity data objects,developing technologies to discover, processing, reconcile, and map these names to their origins within nomenclatural acts

2. To consoidate all nomenclatural acts (sensu lato) from which taxonomic names originate. Tie these acts to their source bibliographic references and typicification records. Includes 'taxonomic acts' that are original taxonomic assertions

3. Develop a catalog of taxonomic checklists, floras, faunas and monographs. Seek to ties these to 2.