Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference

The Biodiversity Institute (BI) has a project to add a non-European perspective to the Panorama Exhibit. This contains 213 species, all accessioned and databased by the BI. It has been proposed to add Native American names and knowledge of uses to the labels of the species. This begs a number of questions: (1) in what languages. (2) With what alphabet (3) Who should be the partners. (3) What parts of the knowledge are "proprietary" of a nation or tribe. And last but not least, (4) knowledge is only a part of a world view. How one represents a world view in a database? These problems are discussed and exemplified in the context of the Panorama