C5.90 Inclusion of missing data items in GBIF index

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) was established to make biodiversity data openly and universally available. One of the products of GBIF is a central index database that stores a limited number of core data elements. Because original biodiversity data remain with the data providers, the data not stored in the index database can be viewed but not be searched. Filtering and search functionality in user interfaces (GBIF portal, http://data.gbif.org) and other specialized portals set up on the GBIF infrastructure (e.g. BioCASE portal http://search.biocase.org, EDIT portal), rely on the data stored in the GBIF index database.

This component is to document which data items are found missing in the GBIF index (June 2008) from the user perspective of taxonomists. This evaluation is based on the results of component C5.89 “List of data items and searchable data items in existing portals” (Activity 5.9.1: Define specimen access interface for taxonomists) and on interviews with taxonomists of different fields (botany, mycology, zoology, phycology) aimed at getting an overview of taxonomist’s needs. The taxonomists weighted the categories listed in C5.89 as high priority (= data item is a key to taxonomic information and must be searchable) or priority (data item is identified as important and must be displayed independently of the provider accessibility). The resulting priority list contains data items which need to be stored in the GBIF index database. Other data items should be shown when the original data record is requested, for example by displaying the original data of the data provider (XML-file or text by means of style sheet transformation).

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