Scratchpad for a survey

[Charle...@sussexwt.org.uk]

I thought I'd kick the tyres of Scratchpads by creating a site for the
new Sussex Ponds Survey, which is currently underway.

First question I have regarding this: are there any existing examples of
scratchpads (or custom Drupal sites) that focus on a particular survey
rather than a taxonomic group?

Second question: I might want to create a very simple custom taxonomy
based on the broad species groups as defined by the NBN (i.e.,
http://j.mp/tfHpo), but perhaps in a flattened state with just the group
at the top level, then species under it. It would be a taxonomy of
'common pond species' as would be found in, say, a Collins guide aimed
at the general public, rather than professionals. The idea being to use
the Scratchpads facilities to aggregate information in from Wikipedia,
Flickr, etc., etc., and also include a bit of custom Sussex contextual
information.

Third question: in the opinion of those more familiar with it, is
Scratchpads suitable for this project? Or should I perhaps use a custom
Drupal install along with some of the scratchpads modules?

Cheers,
Charles
--
Charles Roper
Biodiversity IT Officer
Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre
http://sxbrc.org.uk | 01273 497554

Sussex Wildlife Trust is a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act. Registered in England, Company No. 698851. Registered Charity No. 207005. VAT Registration No. 191 305969. Registered Office: Woods Mill, Henfield, West Sussex BN5 9SD. Telephone 01273 492630

[Vincent Smith]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 5:57 PM, <Charle...@sussexwt.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I thought I'd kick the tyres of Scratchpads by creating a site for the
> new Sussex Ponds Survey, which is currently underway.
>
> First question I have regarding this: are there any existing examples of
> scratchpads (or custom Drupal sites) that focus on a particular survey
> rather than a taxonomic group?

Not really (Simon - do you know of any existing sites like
this?).Plenty have specimen observations but there is nothing that
just covers a survey of the kind you are planning.

> Second question: I might want to create a very simple custom taxonomy
> based on the broad species groups as defined by the NBN (i.e.,
> http://j.mp/tfHpo), but perhaps in a flattened state with just the group
> at the top level, then species under it. It would be a taxonomy of
> 'common pond species' as would be found in, say, a Collins guide aimed
> at the general public, rather than professionals. The idea being to use
> the Scratchpads facilities to aggregate information in from Wikipedia,
> Flickr, etc., etc., and also include a bit of custom Sussex contextual
> information.
>

This is straightforward, though you'd have to import it from the Excel
spreadsheet template
(http://scratchpads.eu/fileshare/files/4466/Taxonomy/TaxonomyTemplate1.1.xls)
saved as a Tab separated file OR enter it manually. Add a Vocabulary
(Taxonomy) then click through to the import options.

> Third question: in the opinion of those more familiar with it, is
> Scratchpads suitable for this project? Or should I perhaps use a custom
> Drupal install along with some of the scratchpads modules?

For speed and hackability (if your goal is just to create this site
and get it used) you are much better off with a regular Drupal install
and some of the Scratchpad modules. However, I think the bigger goal
here is to identify what is required to make the Scratchpads (or
similar) work in a survey / recorder type context, such that its
possible to create new sites easily, and instantly have them plugged
into the wider NBN network and related resources. You can also manage
the admin and updates (especially if they are all sitting on a few
servers) much more easily. As the Scratchpads stand I think there is
too much complexity to make them work in a survey / recorder type
context just yet. Crucially they are also missing much of the survey
type functionality (they were never specifically developed for this
audience). However, bolting in the Indicia module might be the
quickest way to get this functionality and they demonstrate (IMHO) a
model that scales well and is arguably more sustainable that the
piecemeal site-by-site approach.

My longer term goal is to try and hook up the professional and
"amateur" communities so having a single (flexible) system is very
attractive in this regard.

Best,

Vince

> Cheers,
> Charles
> --
> Charles Roper
> Biodiversity IT Officer
> Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre
> http://sxbrc.org.uk | 01273 497554
>
>
>
> Sussex Wildlife Trust is a company limited by guarantee under the Companies Act.  Registered in England, Company No. 698851.   Registered Charity No. 207005.  VAT Registration No. 191 305969.   Registered Office: Woods Mill, Henfield, West Sussex BN5 9SD.  Telephone 01273 492630
>
>

--
_____________________________________________________________

Dr. Vincent S. Smith
Cybertaxonomist, The Natural History Museum
Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK

Web: http://vsmith.info/
E-mail: vi...@vsmith.info (preferred)
Tel: +44 (0) 207 942 5127, Fax: +44 (0) 207 942 5661
Skype: vsmithuk; or SkypeIn London: +44 (0)207 558 8950
iChat Video Conferencing: vsmi...@mac.com (invitation only)
_____________________________________________________________

[John van Breda]

One thing that strikes me about integrating Indicia into Scratchpads would
be to allow Indicia to use the Taxonomy modules to get the list of species
that can be recorded in a form. If we can integrate properly in this respect
it means that we could also easily build pages which integrate Scratchpads
material with species observations and maps from Indicia.

I'll have a think about it.

Cheers

John

[Bacon, Jim]

My take on this is that a Scratchpad is Drupal with a constrained set of modules tailored for taxonomists. Because both you and I, Charles, want to add in Indicia we don't want that constraint so we won't want a Scratchpad as they currently exist.

However, once we have come up with a set of modules and a profile suitable for surveys and schemes, it can be served up again and again in just the same way. And it could appear as a unified creation as part of Scratchpads. As Vince indicates, hooking up the professional and "amateur" communities could have benefits.

I am on leave most of October so will be interested to see where you have got to when I return.

Jim.

Best,

Vince

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[Stuart Ball]

> One thing that strikes me about integrating Indicia into Scratchpads
would

> Be to allow Indicia to use the Taxonomy modules to get the list of

species
> that can be recorded in a form.

That is certainly how I have built the hoverfly stuff. I have used a
standard vocabulary to set up the species checklist - including
synonyms. I then tag any content (species account, species images, etc)
and finally draw all the stuff related to a given species together in a
single page by finding the content tagged with the taxonomy term. For
Indicia to integrate, I would certainly need some way of tagging records
with the taxonomy term.

Two points to note about taxonomy:

Drupal doesn't seem to make any use of taxonomy synonyms - for example,
they aren't included in taxonomy searches. There is a Synonyms module
(http://drupal.org/project/synonyms) which adds synonyms to the site
indexes and search functionality. In addition, I had to hack the views
module to allow synonyms to be shown in a custom view - see this issue
http://drupal.org/node/582228 - it looks as if my suggested change have
been accepted and may make it into the module code!

I found a very useful little module - term fields
(http://drupal.org/project/term_fields) which is a bit like CCK for
taxonomy - it allows you to add additional fields to taxonomy terms. I
use it to add a field to store GBIF species numbers so that I can call a
GBIF map very simply (just an iframe in a block - see
http://www.korbinus.net/blog/?p=51).

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: scrat...@googlegroups.com [mailto:scrat...@googlegroups.com]

On Behalf Of John van Breda
Sent: 28 September 2009 20:13
To: scrat...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [scratchpads] Re: Scratchpad for a survey

Cheers

John

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[John van Breda]

Indicia already has the concept of an "external key" - which I'd envisaged
would allow you to tag taxa with the key from the source system allowing you
to refer back. An example would be to store Taxon Version Keys for
integration with the Gateway and other NBN data. But one way to approach
this would be to write an export to Indicia module, which grabs a Drupal
taxonomy (and synonyms) and sends them to Indicia via the web services to
build a new list to record against. This module could then get the Ids of
the generated Indicia taxa, and use the term fields module to store these
against the taxonomy in Drupal. Then you will be able to pull in Indicia
reports and maps into your Drupal mashups.