Re: specialist directory

[ewan.fordyce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (ewan fordyce)]

Re: specialist directory comments from poulton@gsc.emr.ca
>Does the
>future of paleo involve a much smaller number of specialists contributing
>their service in a much more international manner than even at present?

Yes; there seems to be little real prospect of improvement over the next
few years.  Further,  beyond industry, universities and museums worldwide
seem to be losing staff involved in biosystematic work.  And, it is
difficult most places to get research grants for systematic studies.

On the positive side, one way to optimise flow of information about
"specialist topics" is to generate a home page for WWW.  Topics thus can be
identified on a web search - though rapid growth of WWW will probably soon
hamper exhaustive searches.  So, despite occasional grumbles about a low
signal to noise ratio on paleonet, this (paleonet) seems to be an excellent
way to keep in touch with work around the world.

On some other nets, contributors post title and abstracts of recent
publications.  Perhaps we should do this for paleonet.

R. Ewan Fordyce, Associate Professor, Department of Geology,
University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, NZ
fax 64-3-479-7527, ph. 64-3-479-7510, home ph. 64-3-473-0463