Kennedy

A comprehensive taxonomic authority file is required to efficiently share and integrate marine biological data by organism names. Beyond the frequent human error introduction of mixed cases and typos, there is the common occurrence of multiple names for the same organism (synonyms) and the same name applied to many different organisms (homonyms). A given dataset may refer to a once valid old name that has since been updated by the taxonomic experts and may also have a separate entry for the new currently valid name. Users accessing the data may not be aware of the multiple names thus may only obtain a subset of the data they were looking for and likely need. Linking with multiple datasets only increases the chances of missing relevant data. Sharing biological data over the web necessitates a decision on standardization of organism names. As the result of work being done for DFO Maritimes' datasets, this presentation addresses the issues one may encounter when linking data by organism names, the results of using the Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) to standardize organism names and a discussion regarding its use as an international standard for internet sharing and linking of biological data.