mcebach's blog

New Activity Leader for WP5.4 Geographical Components

Patricia Mergen (RMCA) will now be leading the WP5.4 geographical component activity in Belgium.

If you have any queries regarding WP5's geographical components please contact Patricia Mergen.

C5.46 Taxonomic exchange standard specification

The report C5.45 (Identified and described suitable taxonomic tools), the cybertaxonomic platform architecture changed from a set of loosely coupled already existing taxonomic tools (geographic, descriptive, publishing, etc.) to a system based on a common data model (CDM) which uses the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and builds the ground for other applications interfacing with core CDM based data storages.
The Component can be downloaded here.

C5.19 Linkage to BHL – Report for ViTaL Collection Development Policy

This document outlines the means of linking search results in the Virtual Taxonomic Library (ViTaL), currently at the initial stages of development at the Natural History Museum (London) with content held in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an important and growing repository of freely available taxonomic literature, which will be one of the sources available for searching by ViTaL users.
A draft collections development policy is also included.
The component can be downloaded here.

C5.26 ViTaL requirements analysis

This document sets out an analysis of the results of the requirements gathering phase carried out by staff at the Natural History Museum (London) for the ViTaL bibliographic data and literature search tools project.
The requirements where collected through a combinations of consultations with taxonomists and library staff, and also though a questionnaire circulated to subscribers of the Taxacom mailing list. The collected responses to the questionnaire and additional comments can be seen in EDIT Component C5.18 ViTaL requirements report.

C5.15 ViTaL draft system design

The component can be downloaded here.

C5.21 ViTaL software recommendations

Software recommendations for system components of ViTaL, the Virtual Taxonomic Library, are as follows:
1 Bibliographic reference harvesting, aggregation and search modules
• The choice of application server framework and language is still open and will be decided in consultation with the development team.
2 Web application framework
• Drupal with standard and bespoke modules.
3 Metasearching and linking
Ex Libris Group applications
Metalib for metasearching, with the X-Server API module
SFX OpenURL link resolver and context management tools

National Botanic Garden of Belgium: The Virtual Herbarium

Few years ago, we have developped a querying on exported data from BG-BASE and direct link to images.
Many specimens have been encoded in BGBase and more than 20.000 of them have been digitized.
Here is a link to a short demo: http://www.br.fgov.be/tap/query.html

Since several months, another colleague is developping a brand new project: "The Virtual Herbarium"

The technology used to implement the project: PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL.
The search criteria are: Genus, Species, Country, Type specimen, Collector, Barcode number etc...

C5.10 (Formerly D5.2.2.2) Operational function model for ATBI+M

The current component captures all details of existing software processes, that are practiced for inventorying purposes under the taxonomic researcher community.

Second ISTC Meeting September 13-14, 2007 in Berlin

The second ISTC meeting will be held between 12:00 – 17:00 on September 13th & between 09:00 – 13:00 on September 14th, 2007 in the Conference Room (A105) on the 2nd Floor of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8, D-14191 Berlin, Germany.

Please note that the meeting is closed and open only to ISTC members.

An accommodation guide, which explains how to get here, as well as relevant maps can be found here

C5.45 Report identified and described suitable taxonomic tools

The initial EDIT work plan assumed that the Platform for Cybertaxonomy would be a set of loosely coupled taxonomic tools complying with certain information standards, which are to be defined by the project. Preferably, these tools are already existing ones rather than software, which had to be developed from scratch within the framework of EDIT. Therefore activities in work package 5 focus very much on the testing and assessment of software already in use and development capacities should be directed to extension and modification of selected solutions.

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