information on a demonstration project - past and future?

[kse...@bio.umass.edu]

I probably should have put this up on the google group page so people
could discuss it, so here is the same thing as yesterday's email.

At the meeting last week the question came up as to what we had done,
or should do now, about creating a demonstration database that
combined information from all our herbaria. The species we had
selected for the demonstration database were Celastrus orbiculatus, C.
scandens, and Epipactis helleborine. Our records indicate that we
were going to make excel files with the following information:
species, collector, collection number, collection date, state, county,
town, locality and herbarium. In March 2004 we (MASS) and probably
some other herbaria made these files, and sent them to Nico Cellinese
at Yale. We did not send our information on C. orbiculatus because
Les Mehrhoff at CONN was going to supply the information. I think the
people involved got busy with other things.
We could try again once we have a place to send the
information. We could consider georeferencing it before sending. We
have about 125 specimens of these three species.
Karen

[patrick...@yale.edu]

Hi Karen,

We should try to collect this data again, and I like your suggestion
that we georeference localities.

I'd like to propose that we try to provide the data for the fields
given in the Epipactis file that Janet sent to the group, minus the
AMES accession number.

I have uploaded to the files section the example Epipactis file with
blank worksheet and the fields that I propose we supply.

These files could be sent to me here via email, and I can consult with
James about how best to proceed.

Patrick

[Janet]

I have a couple of questions on the demonstration project:
1. Are we going to add specimen images or serve just the label data?
2. Do we want to add a column for unique identifiers such as barcode #
or accession #, if used?
Thanks!
Janet

> > Karen- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[bob.c...@gmail.com]

I've sent Patrick UConn's data on the three species, using the same
headings as in the file Janet sent, but replacing the Ames number with
our barcode number, which serves as the unique identifier. I wonder if
we need both the Record Number and a Barcode number; one might
suffice. I also added Latitude and Longitude for each record and a
Description column, which includes basic descriptive information on a
specimen -- ovary color, for instance -- but that can be stripped out
in compiling the information if it's not useful.
Bob

[patrick...@yale.edu]

Janet (& Bob),

Very good question. I think that we should try to provide a globally
unique identifier (GUID) for each record. I had assumed that the
"Record" column could handle this, but I guess in the example file the
AMES field contained a GUID and "record" was an internal catalog
record number. If institutions have a barcode (with Herbarium
acronym), I think that at least that should be provided. However, for
some institutions it may be that there is no barcode (or GUID). In
those cases some unique internal number (an accession number or a
catalog number) prefixed with the herbarium acronym would be fine (I
suppose?). This is the kind of thing that we need to hash out before
things get scaled up. There must be a "best practice" suggestion that
GBIF or some other organization has proposed. We need to adopt a
standard. James...any ideas?

To be clear about what we need, I've added a "barcode" field and
renamed the record field to the excel spreadsheet.

Regarding images, this is a bit more complicated. Did we decide to do
this right away? I suppose that we would need to decide on a naming
convention for the file, a file size/resolution, appropriate metadata
to be included, etc. There is also the issue of storage space and
transmittal through cyberspace. More to think about before we scale
up. Any suggestions?

Patrick



Any other thoughts?


On Jun 16, 2:04 pm, "robert.cap...@uconn.edu" <bob.cap...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Dal...@aol.com]

 

Janet (& Bob),

Very good question.  I think that we should try to provide a globally
unique identifier (GUID) for each record.  I had assumed that the
"Record" column could handle this, but I guess in the example file the
AMES field contained a GUID and "record" was an internal catalog
record number.  If institutions have a barcode (with Herbarium
acronym), I think that at least that should be provided.  However, for
some institutions it may be that there is no barcode (or GUID).  In
those cases some unique internal number (an accession number or a
catalog number) prefixed with the herbarium acronym would be fine (I
suppose?).  This is the kind of thing that we need to hash out before
things get scaled up. There must be a "best practice" suggestion that
GBIF or some other organization has proposed.  We need to adopt a
standard.  James...any ideas?

>>Here at UVM we use a prefix "UVMVT" (the institution acronym plus the Index Herbariorum acronym) followed by a six digit number as our (hopefully) globally unique identifier. This is used for the barcode. Since we have no accession numbers, we are using the single GUID. Since Specify 5.2 allows only numerals for their Catalog Number field, only the six digits go into the Specify field.

To be clear about what we need, I've added a "barcode" field and
renamed the record field to the excel spreadsheet.

Regarding images, this is a bit more complicated.  Did we decide to do
this right away?  I suppose that we would need to decide on a naming
convention for the file, a file size/resolution, appropriate metadata
to be included, etc.  There is also the issue of storage space and
transmittal through cyberspace.  More to think about before we scale
up.  Any suggestions?

 

>>We have designed our databasing process so that each image is photographed in an early step. The data entry folks work off of the images. This reduces wear and tear on the specimens and saves some counter space.

File naming conventions for images have been worked out by several herbaria already; I suggest we have a look at those. --Dorothy

 

 

 

Dorothy A.

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