[2] A taxonomic database may incorporate organism identifiers (scientific name, author, and – for zoological taxa – year of original publication), synonyms, taxonomic opinions, literature sources or citations, illustrations or photographs, and biological attributes for each taxon (such as geographic distribution, ecology, descriptive information, threatened or vulnerable status, etc.).
[6][7] A taxonomic database aims to accurately model the characteristics of interest that are relevant to the organisms which are in scope for the intended coverage and usage of the system.
A number of other taxonomic databases specializing in particular groups of organisms that appeared in the 1970s through to the present jointly contribute to the Species 2000 project, which since 2001 has been partnering with ITIS to produce a combined product, the Catalogue of Life.
[3] One forum that has promoted discussion and possible solutions to these and related problems since 1985 is the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), originally called the Taxonomic Database Working Group.
While online databases have great benefits (for example, increased access to taxonomic information), they also have issues such as data integrity risks due to on- and off-line versions and continuous updates, technical access issues due to server or internet outage, and differing capacities for complex queries to extract taxonomic data into lists.