Fwd: Portal Management Updates: Image Hosting, Extended Specimen, Upcoming Code Release, & Spring Portal Campaigns

[Lindsay Walker]

Hi everyone,

If you did not attend Monday's Symbiota Support Group meeting, please note the poll at the bottom of our latest newsletter!

Or see: https://symbiota.org/extended-specimen-updates

~Lindsay

Lindsay Walker
Community Manager

Symbiota Support Hub
Arizona State University | iDigBio

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Symbiota Support Hub <h...@symbiota.org>
Date: Wed, Mar 6, 2024 at 10:01 AM
Subject: Portal Management Updates: Image Hosting, Extended Specimen, Upcoming Code Release, & Spring Portal Campaigns
To: <ljwa...@asu.edu>

View in browser Portal Management Communications March 2024 Dear Symbiota community, Because you are an administrator for one or more collections in a Symbiota portal, the Support Hub will send you occasional updates about issues that affect all Symbiota portals. Please share this information with your collection editors, and contact us if you have questions about these updates. This content will also be posted to our website for future reference. –The Symbiota Support Hub Portal Management Updates Images & Media Hosting The Symbiota Support Hub (SSH) receives frequent inquiries about adding images to records in Symbiota portals. In February, the SSH presented an updated overview on this topic during the monthly Symbiota Support Group meeting. All users who contribute images to Symbiota portals are encouraged to review this recorded presentation, especially if you have not recently been in communication with the SSH about image management or image hosting in your portal. The Symbiota Support Group meeting in February 2024 presented an overview of how images are managed and hosted in Symbiota portals (recording). Upcoming Symbiota Code Release The ASU BioKIC team is slated to release their latest version of the Symbiota codebase, Symbiota 3.1, in Spring 2024. This update will include tools to facilitate batch uploading of Linked Resources and image metadata, and it will enable the use of the open source maps from Leaflet instead of Google Maps, among other enhancements and bug fixes. Many pages have also been optimized to improve accessibility. Many of these developments were made possible through NSF subawards, contract services, and the NEON Project. Release notes for versions of the Symbiota code will be found here, once ready. A future Symbiota Support Group meeting will orient the community to the new updates: stay tuned! Because funding for the Symbiota Support Hub does not include software development, many of the forthcoming improvements to the Symbiota code base were made possible by support from individual institutions and TCNs. Portal Advancement Campaigns Consortium of Bryophyte Herbaria: bryophyteportal.org | Consortium of Lichen Herbaria: lichenportal.org Members of the Consortium of Lichen Herbaria and the Consortium of Bryophyte Herbaria should anticipate forthcoming announcements about spring Portal Advancement Campaigns. The Symbiota Support Hub will be working with the managers of these portals to coordinate Office Hours for these portal communities in April and May. Meeting registration and more information about these events will be posted on the SSH website. New and prospective portal members will also be welcome to join. Extended Specimen Updates The Extended Specimen follows from the growing recognition that specimens are far more complex than their isolated occurrences, which has real implications for their digital representation and how this information is managed, shared, and used in collections databases and public aggregators. Beyond the core occurrence, specimens represent complex, interrelated networks of information. Symbiota software increasingly supports the Extended Specimen by enabling digital linkages to traits, specimen and taxon associations, publications, genetic data, and more. If you were unable to participate in the Symbiota Support Group meeting held on Monday, March 4 about current and potential new directions for the Extended Specimen in Symbiota portals (recording), you can still view, comment on, and add to the lists of community-contributed ideas for Extended Specimen functionality in GitHub Issues and Discussions. You can also vote on related development priorities here: VOTE on Extended Specimen Priorities Please vote by Friday, March 8 at 5p Pacific time. This 4-question poll should take ~3 minutes or less to complete. Please share these updates with your collections staff and data editors, and contact us if you have questions! iDigBio | Symbiota Support Hub Arizona State University Biodiversity Knowledge Integration Center Tempe, AZ 85282 United States he...@symbiota.org Learn more about Symbiota: Portals | Events | Resources | What's New? You received this email because you are an administrator for one or more collections in a Symbiota portal. You may opt out of these emails at any time; however, we encourage you to first read our Communications FAQ. Unsubscribe Interested in developing new tools for your portal? Check out our codebase on GitHub! This communication was made possible by U.S. National Science Foundation Award 2027654 and others. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.