Workshops

Workshops #1 and #2 morning sessions are full. There are still openings in these workshops in the afternoon. Workshop 4 has been cancelled due to unforseen events.

Four workshops are scheduled for Saturday, May 27th at the CERIA building on the UNM campus. Workshops 1 & 2 are half-day, morning workshops which will be repeated in the afternoon. Meeting participants may choose to attend either or both of these sessions. Workshop 3 will be offered only in the morning and workshop 4 will take up a full day.

Workshop 1 - Data quality and data cleaning (half-day)
The Morning Session is Full

Organizer: Larry Speers
Presenter: Arthur Chapman

The rapid increase in the exchange and availability of taxonomic and primary species data has made the consideration of the quality of these data an an important agenda item as users of these data begin to require more detail on the quality of the information. No matter how efficient the process of data entry, errors will still occur. Thus, museums must apply to their data principles of error detection, validation and cleaning.

This workshop will examine the principles of data quality that should become core to the business of museum collections around the world as they release their data to the broader community. We will also examine methods for preventing, detecting, and cleaning errors in primary specimen databases, in general, and with respect to nomenclatural and spatial information.

Workshop 2 - The ins and outs of imaging for museum collections
(half-day) The Morning Session is Full

Organizer/Presenter: Reed Beaman

This workshop will cover the basic concepts and methodology involved with imaging museum specimens. They will include discussion of methodology and best practices and discussion of the ins and outs of providing images on-line.

Workshop 3 - Arctos: a biodiversity informatics tool (morning only)

Organizer: Gordon Jarrell

Arctos is a partnership among several museums to build a full-featured suite of Web applications over the evolving data model descended from the "MVZ Model." The University of Alaska Museum of the North and the Museum of Southwestern Biology are now the first museums to post their working collection data in a single system on the Internet.  The University of California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology is reengirneering  its database to use Arctos and extending the system to include its ~100,000 pages of historic field notes and ~14,000 images cross-referenced to collection data. Software (GreF) also has been written to facilitate data capture from images and field note scans and to incorporate them into the specimen database.  The session will have presentations describing the system and its several developing features.

Workshop 4 - Becoming a GBIF data provider (full-day)
Workshop Cancelled

Organizer: Hannu Saarenmaa
Teacher: Giorgos Ksouris

Objective

This is a one-day hands-on training workshop about the basic technologies for data providers that are used in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) network. During the workshop attendees will learn the basics of how to install a DiGIR data provider, how to connect it to database, how to map their local data model to the Darwin Core 1.2 standard, how to register the data provider with GBIF, and how to search data through GBIF data portal. Detailed agenda and prerequisites are given in http://www.gbif.org/Support/training/courses/course01. The instructor is Giorgos Ksouris from the GBIF Secretariat.

The DiGIR network is designed to serve primary data on species occurrences derived from museum specimens and observational records.  This training is designed to facilitate the development of a network of DiGIR providers serving primary data.  In most instances these servers will be hosted by the Natural History Collections or other institutions that hold this type if data. It would be expected that trainees already have access to these types of data sets or are preparing to train others that are willing to serve this type of information.

Target Audience

The course is designed for database custodians and scientists who want to understand how GBIF data is provided.

The trainees should have some technical competence in these areas:

• Server operating systems covered (Linux/Unix and/or Windows 2000/XP):
  Basic to intermediate level of knowledge.
• Relational databases: Basic knowledge of the concepts.
• Internet: Basic knowledge of web servers such as Apache and IIS.
• XML: Basic knowledge.