This project serves to support the processing of organism names and represents a consolidation of effort by a number of partnering organisations and initiatives. The project includes links to web applications, source code, shared dictionaries and test files, and other useful resources for those in need of tools and services for finding, parsing, and processing taxonomic names. This project was initiated by the participants of the Nomina IV workshop (May 2009) supported by the Encyclopedia of Life and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

This project serves as the basis for a Working Session on Name Processing at the TDWG 2009 conference.

Table of Contents

• Name Parsing - refers to dividing a taxon name into identified constituent parts.
• Name Recognition - refers to processes that can distinguish known scientific names within free-text. Typically name recognition processes rely on dictionaries (or lexicons) containing parts of known names.
• Names Discovery extends name recognition to include novel name forms whose constituent parts may not be included in a dictionary.
• Name Matching refers to processes that are able to identify two differently-spelled names as equivalent.
• Names Reconciliation or de-aliasing methods use algorithms to match orthographic variants of a name into a single logical group.

Representative Organisations and Initiatives

It supports the development of biodiversity informatics initiatives that include:

• Global Names Architecture - working to improve access to information about names and taxa.
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Ocean Biogeographic Information System
• Encyclopedia of Life
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility
• Plazi.org
• CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research / OBIS Australia
• uBio.org
• MBLWHOILibrary
• ITIS and the Catalogue of Life Partnership