I was looking for a list of references like books or publications about a certain subject that I could reference in a posting. When I state that I tried to key a bug in a certain book or publication, is there a reference stack that I could draw from so I don’t have to state the full publication or book title in my discussion, just a reference like BugGuide does li?
There isn’t any such “reference stack” as far as I’m aware and given the breadth of iNaturalist, I doubt that there ever could be.
If you have a list of frequently used sources, what I’d personally recommend is to create a journal entry (or multiple ones, by subject) on your iNat profile with your personal list of frequently accessed references, then you could either link to that, or copy and paste the references whenever required.
Here’s my personal (and rather messy) list of identification resources that I frequently use for Species Identification in British Columbia (Canada). It’s just a journal entry and I can update it whenever I discover some new-to-me & useful reference. It’s also frequently served just as a bookmark list for when I go on a little identification marathon.
Another option which might work, since I might not be understanding your question exactly as intended, is to keep a personal FAQ with “technical copypastas”. It’s a great way to collect stock explanations for frequently encountered points of confusion. A simple markdown file (accessed with Obsidian.md) on my computer works for that, since the content just needs to be pasted as a comment on an observation.
Thanks for the answer and suggestions. The note on my profile might work so people can get to it if they want the reference. I assume that would just be a hyperlink to my profile. I’ll try it.
The scope of iNaturalist is all life: flora, fauna, fungi and the rest. With the number of people globally involved in botany/zoology/virology/conservation/etc/etc in the hundreds of millions, and therefore relevant scientific papers and books being published literally every couple of minutes, maintaining such a list would surely be a full-time job for multiple people!
I would do something like murphyslab suggests if your ID speciality is mainly just in one or two particular areas.
Thanks. The way BugGuide.net handles it is a database that any person that posts a specimen can add a book or publication to the list and use an automatically generated number to reference it. That way anybody can use that reference number without having to keep a secret list. It is great because one can find publications that might be relevant to your needs and find where it is available for download.
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You mean the “books” tab, I presume?
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