.: History of Taxonomic Literature II
Taxonomic Literature: a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types, or more commonly known as TL-2, is an indispensable and essential resource in supporting the research of systematic botanists (and zoologists). Likewise, TL-2 is an important reference tool in the science information field for librarians and information professionals working in botany and other life sciences fields. Its coverage is international, providing bibliographic analysis to works in several languages such as German, English, French, and Latin. Overall, TL-2 provides the most comprehensive biographical and bibliographical analysis for systematic botany literature published between 1753 and 1940 to date.
The work began in the 1950's by Dutch Botanist Frans A. Stafleu (1921-1997) who kept a card index of plant taxonomist literature in support of the fourth edition of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and Index Nominum Genericorum. In 1964, a visiting botanist Gladys Webster, suggested he publish the index. In 1967, he published the first edition of Taxonomic Literature based on his card index. Then there was pressure from the international botanical community to publish an expanded and more detailed second edition.
In 1973, Stafleu began TL-2 with Richard S. Cowan joining him in the research. The seven volume set was completed in 1988. Because the first volume of this set had no external funding, many libraries' collections were not research, so it was decided that supplements to the First Volume (A-G) were needed. The other six volumes (H-Z) had funding through the National Science Foundation and didn't need supplements. The supplements were completed in 2008. All together, the 15 volume set has been an enormous undertaking for five principal authors, Frans A. Stafleu, Richard S. Cowan, Erik A. Mennega, Dan H. Nicolson, and Laurence J. Dorr.
The work is organized by author in alphabetical order. The author entries are well organized, providing a variety of information on each botanist. A typical entry will have a short biography, information where the herbarium specimens are deposited, and where further information about the author can be found. The main part of each author entry are the publications the author has written, each one is a numbered entry in chronological order. Extremely useful to the researcher or librarian is information on which libraries may own a copy of the publication. Over 100 libraries' collections were evaluated for these volumes. In the back of the book, two extensive indexes are provided. One is an index to the titles in alphabetical order and providing the entry number. The other index provides access to the names found in a title entry.
To learn more about TL-2, please see:
TL-2 speaks volumes by Dan H. Nicolson and Laurence Dorr, http://botany.si.edu/pubs/plantpress/vol11no4.pdf