Dear Matt,

The Species Dictionary itself is alive (and kicking :)); the Species Dictionary website at the NHM has been moribund since 2007, but is currently being rebuilt, as I write, and hopefully the current website will be replaced before the end of December with something much more useful.

So:

The Natural History Museum remains committed to running the Species Dictionary Service (and it should survive cuts in Government spending)

Posts to the NBN Forum are responded to promptly (as with present example!) and suggested names rapidly added to the Dictionary (usually in the List of Additional Names)

Updates of the Dictionary are forwarded to the Gateway and Recorder Teams as demanded (usually several times a year).

New checklists and updates to existing checklists are being incorporated.

Admittedly, the focus has been serving NBN needs, rather than keeping the NHM website up to date. Two factors were that (a) the existing website (constructed in 2000) is inflexible and could no longer properly reflect the increased functionality in the underlying database and (b) there were hardware and software problems which made it difficult to perform updates. Funding has now been secured to proceed with a rebuild which, as mentioned, is currently under way.

Charles Hussey

NBN Species Dictionary Project Manager (Retired!)

Charles,

Many thanks for speedy and positive answers.
I feel better!

MAtt

I would add the UK BAP Priority list errors - http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=1056 and http://forums.nbn.org.uk/viewtopic.php?id=1048 as queries as to what will be happening, although I suspect that this and Matt's queries might fall outside Charles' remit and may belong somewhere at JNCC. I assume that these would be somewhere on a low priority list of things that will be done when resources become available, rather than having fallen through the gaps between responsibilities.