Med-Checklist Project

1.
In 1995, at the Sevilla Meeting, the mandate of the Med-Checklist Board of Advisers was suspended, but at the same time the Secretary of the Med-Checklist project was asked to expedite the completion of the two still wanting dicot volumes of the work.

2.
MED-CHECKLIST: CURRENT STATE OF THE DATABASE PROJECT

The published volumes of Med-Checklist contain highly complex taxonomic and nomenclatural information in a well-defined and concise format. Details given (to name but a few) include synonyms, basionyms, misapplied names, nomenclatural status, aggregates and corresponding microspecies, and (partly referenced) distribution records.

The book makes all this information accessible to the user, however, in some cases the use of a printed publication may be limited. Some desirable functions can only be carried out with databased information, for example flexible generation of statistics, locality-specific reports, full and easy searching and, most of all, direct incorporation of the information which has come forward since the publication of the original work.

Over the past years, we have intermittently worked on the conversion of the typesetting files of Med-Checklist into a database. The advent of modern database application software has given new impetus to this project and achievement of the goal of a searchable database on the World Wide Web is now within reach. The presentation will confer the methods used in the conversion process and report on the present state of the database.

W. Behrendsohn and P. Hein