About
BUGZ
Full-text electronic archive of the Bibliography of New Zealand Terrestrial Invertebrates
1775 - 1993
What is
BUGZ?
BUGZ
is a user-friendly web interface designed to allow full-text search and retrieval
of information from New Zealand’s largest compilation of invertebrate literature
– the 'BUGS' bibliography (Ramsay & Crosby 1992). 'BUGZ'
contains a literature database of 16,080 articles on the terrestrial invertebrates
of New Zealand, published between 1775 and 1993 and provides full-text indexing
of the more than 200,000 pages of text scanned from the articles of the BUGS bibliography.
This massively enhances the search capabilities and subsequent access to archived
information on the taxonomic status, life history, ecology, and conservation significance
in the primary literature on New Zealand’s terrestrial invertebrates.
Apart from the ability to undertake full-text searching,
BUGZ
is the first New Zealand biodiversity database to allow dynamic matching of its
entire full-text database against the taxonomic namebank of uBio – the universal
Biological indexer and organiser. Namebank is a reconciled list of over 8,000,000
taxonomic names (including homonyms, synonyms and common names) and creates a virtual
link to an ever-increasing number of international biodiversity databases (e.g.
GBIF, NCBI, ITIS, Species 2000) that may contain additional biodiversity information
useful to the user.
History of the BUGS bibliography
'BUGS' had its origins in the library of the late David Sharp (1840 - 1922) of England,
who was recorder for the Insecta section of the Zoological Record (1886 - 1922).
Purchased by the Cawthron Institute in 1921, at the instigation of the late Robin
Tillyard (1881 - 1937), it became the foundation of the Cawthron library, subsequent
DSIR Entomology library, and finally the Landcare Research library. In 1956, the
late David Miller produced the first comprehensive bibliography of New Zealand entomology,
a project that included over 4000 references and took 15 years to complete. A further
30 years of work by Graeme Ramsay and Trevor Crosby produced the BUGS bibliography,
which was a guide to 14,500 references from about 950 periodicals, numerous books,
and about 750 theses and projects from New Zealand universities published between
1775 and 1985 (Ramsay & Crosby 1992). All written sources in the public domain were
included in the BUGS bibliography, including both core scientific papers and popular
accounts. Ramsay and Crosby (1992) estimated that about 95% of the core literature
and at least 60% of the popular literature was included for the major invertebrate
groups. A partial update of the bibliography was undertaken from 1985 to 1993, adding
a further ~1500 references to BUGS. It is this 1993 list of 16,080 articles that
BUGZ
draws on to provide information for users, and no value judgements have been made
concerning the quality and status of information in the references.
Why the
BUGZ
project was needed
Information stored in scientific publications is probably the single most important
primary source of information on terrestrial invertebrate biodiversity in New Zealand.
However, efficient access to this material is often difficult or time consuming
due to inadequate indexing of publications and the difficulty in locating the few
remaining copies of many older articles. The information retrieval service created
by Ramsay and Crosby (1992) for the BUGS bibliography was the first attempt to provide
a streamlined retrieval system for New Zealand invertebrate literature. Released
in 1992 this was known as BUGS on-disc and was subsequently updated as part of the
CD-ROM Spectrum 1994 (which contained the update from 1985 to 1993). These original
electronic bibliographies facilitated information retrieval on the basis of a thesaurus
of over 4000 content descriptors, but were inevitably limited in not being able
to access the full text of the articles. As part of the Department of Conservation’s
goal to improve access to biodiversity information in New Zealand,
BUGZ
has been implemented to help address Objective 9.5 of the New Zealand Biodiversity
Strategy (NZBS) 2000: Share information and best practice: Develop resources and
systems that promote the consolidation and sharing of information about indigenous
biodiversity and hands-on biodiversity management. More generally,
BUGZ
also aims to improve access to information on terrestrial invertebrates in New Zealand
for as wide a range of specialist and non-specialist end-users as possible, including
not just research scientists and conservation managers, but also local authorities,
iwi and hapū, sector groups, communities and landowners (Objective 1.1 of the NZBS).
With increased access to information on New Zealand invertebrates,
BUGZ
will foster information sharing at all levels from increased local community awareness
and involvement in actions that support the conservation and sustainable use of
biodiversity at a local level in New Zealand (Objective 8.1), to national strategies
for information sharing on biosecurity issues (Objective 5.1), and to international
cooperation on biodiversity management (Objective 10.2 of the NZBS) and better biosecurity
at the border (Objective 5.3).
Special features of
BUGZ
Apart from the ability to undertake full-text searching,
BUGZ
is the first New Zealand database to allow dynamic matching of its entire full-text
database against the taxonomic namebank of uBio – the universal Biological indexer
and organiser. Namebank is a reconciled list of over 8,000,000 taxonomic names (including
homonyms, synonyms and common names), by matching the names on individual pages
of the core BUGS literature,
BUGZ
creates a virtual link to an ever-increasing number of international databases (e.g.,
GBIF, NCBI, ITIS, Species 2000) and other 'expert systems' that may contain additional
biodiversity information useful to the user.
Limitations and future developments
Where copyright restrictions allow, scanned images of articles from the BUGS bibliography
are available for download free of charge, as scanned image files of the highest
quality possible. The underlying text content of the articles is accessible through
a full-text search facility in
BUGZ
, but is not available for downloading with each article. This allows complete flexibility
to the user, while at the same time only giving access to the unaltered version
of the article as it was originally published, without risk of inadvertent error
through imperfect text recognition or rekeying.
BUGZ
is envisaged as an updatable database and hopefully future funding will allow us
to expand on the resource and make links to present-day publications available in
due course.
The
BUGZ
project was funded by the New Zealand Terrestrial and Freshwater Biodiversity Information
System (TFBIS) fund, administered by the New Zealand Department of Conservation.
References
Ramsay, G. W.; Crosby, T. K. 1992: Bibliography of New Zealand terrestrial invertebrates
1775 - 1985, and guide to the associated information retrieval database BUGS. Bulletin
of the Entomological Society of New Zealand 11: 1 - 440.