EDIT WP5 Platform for Cybertaxonomy

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

The agenda and directions for the First EDIT Developer meeting in Berlin September 6-7th , 2007 is available here: http://dev.e-taxonomy.eu/trac/wiki/DeveloperMeeting2007

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.

One of the central goals of Workpackage 5 is the creation of an internet platform for cybertaxonomy, a collection of online resources designed to enable the scientific community to practise taxonomic work online. In any project involving the design and creation of new software platforms, the first effort must be to fully understand the existing work processes that the software aims to facilitate. To this end, an investigation was undertaken into the current work practises in the field, captured under Component C5.08.

Taxonomists have to continue doing what they have done during the last three hundred years: to describe the variety of life organisms and their location. Although this colossal task is important by itself its relevance is higher now due to current need of reliable biodiversity data. In the attached report we review the available scientific information on the possibilities and usefulness of the compiled species distribution data for basic and applied purposes, two of the deliverables of EDIT Work Package 5.4 “Geographical platform components” (deliverables 5.35 -Predictive distribution modelling report- and 5.38 -Gap analysis in local inventories report-).

Milestone M5.16 summarizes the main criteria on which the taxonomic tools test phase will soon be based of.
Criteria have been structured in five principles categories that are technical properties, knowledge representation, functionalities, user interface and some more general questions.
This list of criteria is non exhaustive and will still be modified after taxonomists interviews.
To download the milestone please click here

A data portal for frequent online publication of taxonomic revisions has been developed in close cooperation with the EDIT WP6 Cichorieae exemplar group. It is also successfully in use to publish the EDIT WP6 Diptera Exemplar group data. The php based system provides a unified insight into the data of projects working on the revision of taxonomic groups. During the design process we focused on a layout which not only adapts the look of according books but also extends it by the means of web technology.

We are delighted to welcome Dorottya Varsányi from the Hungarian Natural History Museum, London, to the WP5 team!

Dorottya Varsányi will be compiling test datasets from the book of Fauna of Aggtelek National Park and georeferencing that data. She is working together with Andras Gubanyi.

The first joined developer meeting for all EDIT developers (not only WP5) is scheduled to take place in the Botanical Museum and Botanical Gardens (BGBM) in Berlin during September 6 – 7, 2007. The technical aspects of the EDIT platform will be presented by WP5 and a discussion about how the different workpackages and activities fit into the platform is expected. For this all participants are asked to briefly present their activities.

More information will be available on the developer wiki shortly

We are delighted to welcome Julius Welby from the Natural History Museum, London, to the WP5 team!

Julius is part of the WP5.3 "Virtual Library of Taxonomic Literature and Documentation" team lead by Jane Smith (NHML).

For further information on the WP5 work plan please visit: http://cybertaxonomy.eu/blog/2007/04/04/workplan