Integrated Authority File
The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used for documentation in libraries and also by archives and museums; the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero licence; the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format; the Integrated Authority File became operational in April 2012 and integrates the content of the following authority files, which have since been discontinued: Name Authority File Corporate Bodies Authority File Subject Headings Authority File Uniform Title File of the Deutsches Musikarchiv At the time of its introduction on 5 April 2012, the GND held 9,493,860 files, including 2,650,000 personalised names.
There are seven main types of GND entities: LIBRIS Virtual International Authority File Information pages about the GND from the German National Library Search via OGND Bereitstellung des ersten GND-Grundbestandes DNB, 19 April 2012 From Authority Control to Linked Authority Data Presentation given by Reinhold Heuvelmann to the ALA MARC Formats Interest Group, June 2012
Virtual International Authority File
The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of several national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. Discussion about having a common international authority started in the late 1990s. After a series of failed attempts to come up with a unique common authority file, the new idea was to link existing national authorities; this would present all the benefits of a common file without requiring a large investment of time and expense in the process. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library and the OCLC on August 6, 2003; the Bibliothèque nationale de France joined the project on October 5, 2007. The project transitioned to being a service of the OCLC on April 4, 2012; the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together. A VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary "see" and "see also" records from the original records, refers to the original authority records.
The data are available for research and data exchange and sharing. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol; the file numbers are being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAF's clustering algorithm is run every month; as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records. Authority control Faceted Application of Subject Terminology Integrated Authority File International Standard Authority Data Number International Standard Name Identifier Wikipedia's authority control template for articles Official website VIAF at OCLC
Hermann's tortoise
Hermann's tortoise is one of five tortoise species traditionally placed in the genus Testudo, the others being the marginated tortoise, Greek tortoise, Russian tortoise, Kleinmann's tortoise. Two subspecies are known: the eastern Hermann's tortoise. Sometimes mentioned as a subspecies, T. h. peleponnesica is not yet confirmed to be genetically different from T. h. boettgeri. The specific epithet, honors French naturalist Johann Hermann; the subspecific name, honors German herpetologist Oskar Boettger. Testudo hermanni can be found throughout southern Europe; the western population is found in eastern Spain, southern France, the Balearic islands, Sardinia, Sicily and central Italy. The eastern population inhabits Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Greece, while T. h. hercegovinensis populates the coasts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. Hermann's tortoises are small to medium-sized tortoises from southern Europe. Young animals and some adults have attractive black and yellow-patterned carapaces, although the brightness may fade with age to a less distinct gray, straw, or yellow coloration.
They have hooked upper jaws and, like other tortoises, possess no teeth, just strong, horny beaks. Their scaly limbs are greyish to brown, with some yellow markings, their tails bear a spur at the tip. Adult males have long and thick tails, well-developed spurs, distinguishing them from females; the eastern subspecies T. h. boettgeri is much larger than the western T. h. hermanni, reaching sizes up to 28 cm in length. A specimen of this size may weigh 3–4 kg. T. h. hermanni grows larger than 18 cm. Some adult specimens are as small as 7 cm. In 2006, Hermann's tortoise was suggested to be moved to the genus Eurotestudo and to bring the subspecies to the rank of species. Though some factors indicate this might be correct, the data at hand are not unequivocally in support and the relationships between Hermann's and the Russian tortoise among each other and to the other species placed in Testudo are not robustly determined. Hence, it seems doubtful; the elevation of the subspecies to full species was tentatively rejected under the biological species concept at least, as there still seems significant gene flow.
Of note, the rate of evolution as measured by mutations accumulating in the mtDNA differs markedly, with the eastern populations have evolved faster. This is due to stronger fragmentation of the population on the mountainous Balkans during the last ice age. While this has no profound implications for taxonomy of this species, apart from suggesting that two other proposed subspecies are just local forms at present, it renders the use of molecular clocks in Testudo more dubious and unreliable than they are for turtles in general; the subspecies T. h. hermanni includes the former subspecies T. h. robertmertensi and has a number of local forms. It has a arched shell with an intensive coloration, with its yellow coloration making a strong contrast to the dark patches; the colors wash out somewhat in older animals, but the intense yellow is maintained. The underside has two connected black bands along the central seam; the coloration of the head ranges from dark green to yellowish, with isolated dark patches.
A particular characteristic is a yellow fleck on the cheek found in most specimens, although not in all. The forelegs have no black pigmentation on their undersides; the base of the claws is lightly colored. The tail in males possesses a spike; the shell protecting the tail is divided. A few specimens can be found with undivided shells, similar to the Greek tortoise; the subspecies T. h. hercegovinensis, known as the Dalmatian tortoise, the local T. h. peloponnesica are now included here. The eastern Hermann's tortoises have arched round carapaces, but some are notably flatter and more oblong; the coloration is brownish with isolated black flecks. The coloring tends to wash out quite in older animals; the underside is always solid horn color and has separate black patches on either side of the central seam. The head is brown to black, with fine scales; the forelegs possess fine scales. The limbs have five claws, which are darkly colored at their base; the hind legs are noticeably thicker than the forelegs plump.
The strong tail ends in a spike, which may be large in older male specimens. Females have noticeably smaller tail spikes, which are bent toward the body, they don't grow a huge amount. Early in the morning, the animals leave their nightly shelters, which are hollows protected by thick bushes or hedges, to bask in the sun and warm their bodies, they roam about the Mediterranean meadows of their habitat in search of food. They determine. In addition to leaves and flowers, the anim
Jean-Frédéric Hermann
Jean-Frédéric Hermann was a French physician and naturalist interested in entomology. Son of Jean Hermann, he continued the index of his father's collection, he studied the comparative anatomy of the mouthparts of insects and mites publishing Mémoire aptérologique with his son in law Frédéric-Louis Hammer in 1804. Three works by Hermann digitized by the Universities of Strasbourg
Botanical name
A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae and plants and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar or Group epithets must conform to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants. The code of nomenclature covers "all organisms traditionally treated as algae, fungi, or plants, whether fossil or non-fossil, including blue-green algae, oomycetes, slime moulds and photosynthetic protists with their taxonomically related non-photosynthetic groups."The purpose of a formal name is to have a single name, accepted and used worldwide for a particular plant or plant group. For example, the botanical name Bellis perennis denotes a plant species, native to most of the countries of Europe and the Middle East, where it has accumulated various names in many languages; the plant was introduced worldwide, bringing it into contact with more languages. English names for this plant species include: daisy, English daisy, lawn daisy.
The cultivar Bellis perennis'Aucubifolia' is a golden-variegated horticultural selection of this species. The botanical name itself is fixed by a type, a particular specimen of an organism to which the scientific name is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralize the defining features of that particular taxon; the usefulness of botanical names is limited by the fact that taxonomic groups are not fixed in size. For example, the traditional view of the family Malvaceae has been expanded in some modern approaches to include what were considered to be several related families; some botanical names refer to groups that are stable while for other names a careful check is needed to see which circumscription is being used. Depending on rank, botanical names may be in two parts or three parts; the names of cultivated plants are not similar to the botanical names, since they may instead involve "unambiguous common names" of species or genera. Cultivated plant names may have an extra component, bringing a maximum of four parts: in one part Plantae Marchantiophyta Magnoliopsida Liliidae Pinophyta Fagaceae Betula in two parts Acacia subg.
Phyllodineae lchemilla subsect. Heliodrosium Berberis thunbergii a species name, i.e. a combination consisting of a genus name and one epithet Syringa'Charisma' – a cultivar within a genus Hydrangea Lacecap Group – a genus name and Group epithet Lilium Darkest Red Group – a genus name and Group epithet Paphiopedilum Greenteaicecreamandraspberries grex snowdrop'John Gray' – an unambiguous common name for the genus Galanthus and a cultivar epithetin three parts Calystegia sepium subsp. Americana, a combination consisting of a genus name and two epithets Crataegus azarolus var. pontica Bellis perennis'Aucubifolia' – a cultivar Brassica oleracea Gemmifera Group – a species name and Group epithetin four parts Scilla hispanica var. campanulata'Rose Queen' – a cultivar within a botanical variety apart from cultivars, the name of a plant can never have more than three parts. A botanical name in three parts, i.e. an infraspecific name needs a "connecting term" to indicate rank. In the Calystegia example above, this is "subsp.", for subspecies.
In botany there are many ranks below that of species. A name of a "subdivision of a genus" needs a connecting term; the connecting term is not part of the name itself. A taxon may be indicated by a listing in more than three parts: "Saxifraga aizoon var. aizoon subvar. Brevifolia f. multicaulis subf. surculosa Engl. & Irmsch." But this is a classification, not a formal botanical name. The botanical name is Saxifraga aizoon subf. surculosa Engl. & Irmsch.. Generic and infraspecific botanical names are printed in italics; the example set by the ICN is to italicize all botanical names, including those above genus, though the ICN preface states: "The Code sets no binding standard in this respect, as typography is a matter of editorial style and tradition not of nomenclature". Most peer-reviewed scientific botanical publications do not italicize names above the rank of genus, non-botanical scientific publications do not, in keeping with two of the three other kinds of scientific name: zoological and bacterial.
For botanical nomenclature, the ICN prescribes a two-part name or binary name for any taxon below the rank of genus down to, including the rank of species. Taxa below the rank of species get a three part. A binary name consists of the name of an epithet. In the case of a species this is a specific epithet:Bellis perennis is the name of a species, in which perennis is the specific epithet. There is no connecting term involved. In t
Musée zoologique de la ville de Strasbourg
The Musée zoologique de la ville de Strasbourg is a natural history museum displaying the zoological collections of the city of Strasbourg and curated by the University of Strasbourg. In 1802, the city of Strasbourg purchased all of the natural history collections of Johann Hermann; when the University of Strasbourg was created anew in 1872, the management and curation of the museum was entrusted to it. A spacious new building was erected from 1890 to 1893 and the collection continued to grow; the museum has collections of birds, marine mammals and insects, with a particular focus on Alsatian fauna. There is a reconstruction of Johann Hermann's study, containing many documents and specimens of his time; the collections include: 1,350,000 invertebrates 1,000,000 insects 18,000 birds 10,000 mammals 2,450 fish 1,300 reptiles and amphibians Ludwig Heinrich Philipp Döderlein Histoires naturelles: Les collections du Musée Zoologique de la Ville de Strasbourg, Éditions des Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg, February 2008, ISBN 978-2-35125-054-9 Official website Overview of the collections
Natural history
Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms including animals and plants in their environment. A person who studies natural history is called natural historian. Natural history is not limited to it, it involves the systematic study of any category of natural organisms. So while it dates from studies in the ancient Greco-Roman world and the mediaeval Arabic world, through to European Renaissance naturalists working in near isolation, today's natural history is a cross discipline umbrella of many specialty sciences; the meaning of the English term "natural history" has narrowed progressively with time. In antiquity, "natural history" covered anything connected with nature, or which used materials drawn from nature, such as Pliny the Elder's encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, which covers astronomy, geography and their technology and superstition, as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two main divisions: the humanities and divinity, with science studied through texts rather than observation or experiment.
The study of nature revived in the Renaissance, became a third branch of academic knowledge, itself divided into descriptive natural history and natural philosophy, the analytical study of nature. In modern terms, natural philosophy corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, while natural history included the biological and geological sciences; the two were associated. During the heyday of the gentleman scientists, many people contributed to both fields, early papers in both were read at professional science society meetings such as the Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences – both founded during the seventeenth century. Natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus' aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden; the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits. Modern definitions of natural history come from a variety of fields and sources, many of the modern definitions emphasize a particular aspect of the field, creating a plurality of definitions with a number of common themes among them.
For example, while natural history is most defined as a type of observation and a subject of study, it can be defined as a body of knowledge, as a craft or a practice, in which the emphasis is placed more on the observer than on the observed. Definitions from biologists focus on the scientific study of individual organisms in their environment, as seen in this definition by Marston Bates: "Natural history is the study of animals and Plants – of organisms.... I like to think of natural history as the study of life at the level of the individual – of what plants and animals do, how they react to each other and their environment, how they are organized into larger groupings like populations and communities" and this more recent definition by D. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner: "The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior, their relationships with other species"; this focus on organisms in their environment is echoed by H. W. Greene and J. B. Losos: "Natural history focuses on where organisms are and what they do in their environment, including interactions with other organisms.
It encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do". Some definitions go further, focusing on direct observation of organisms in their environment, both past and present, such as this one by G. A. Bartholomew: "A student of natural history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants and animals directly; because organisms are functionally inseparable from the environment in which they live and because their structure and function cannot be adequately interpreted without knowing some of their evolutionary history, the study of natural history embraces the study of fossils as well as physiographic and other aspects of the physical environment". A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a descriptive component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene: "Descriptive ecology and ethology". Several authors have argued for a more expansive view of natural history, including S. Herman, who defines the field as "the scientific study of plants and animals in their natural environments.
It is concerned with levels of organization from the individual organism to the ecosystem, stresses identification, life history, distribution and inter-relationships. It and appropriately includes an esthetic component", T. Fleischner, who defines the field more broadly, as "A practice of intentional, focused attentiveness and receptivity to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy"; these definitions explicitly include the arts in the field of natural history, are aligned with the broad definition outlined by B. Lopez, who defines the field as the "Patient interrogation of a landscape" while referring to the natural history knowledge of the Eskimo. A different framework for natural history, covering a similar range of themes, is implied in the scope of work encompassed by many leading natural history museums, which include elements of anthropology, geology and astronomy along with botany and zoology, or include both cultural and natural components of the world; the pl
