2025-11-07 –, Room 340
The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is the protocol by which scientific names are validated and properly formed. It also is pretty broken. There are issues with grammatical agreement of species names, for one, and other issues with how names which are set by it differ because of different lists made by different people using different interpretations of the Code. Having conflicting names in your data makes life difficult. In this talk, I cover briefly how the Code works, and then I go on to discuss how to reconcile different taxonomies using Wikidata and code, so that you can know what bird or fish you're looking at when you're doing your research.
The title of the talk is from Shakespeare. Shakespeare will be minimally relevant to this talk. Anyone should be able to attend this, beginner or old-timer.
Is this a language and tools talk? Kind of, yes! It deals with language and tools. What's not to like?
Richard Littauer is a PhD student in Computer Science at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington in Pōneke, Aotearoa New Zealand. His primary focus is understanding ecology and bird populations using computational modeling. His research interests beyond that involve open science, open source, community science platforms, and taxonomy.
As well, Richard is the Interim Executive Director for the GNOME Foundation, a nonprofit building a diverse and sustainable free software personal computing ecosystem. He is an organizer for SustainOSS, and has recorded hundreds of podcasts on open source sustainability there. He is also one of the two organizers of CURIOSS, the community for university and research institution open source program