EDIT WP5 Platform for Cybertaxonomy

5 descriptive tools that should be integrated in the cybertaxonomic platform in the future have previously been selected in order to be tested.
This component provides tool providers and taxonomists point of view about these taxonomic tools.
This document can be downloaded here.

The HTML compilation and link collection of relevant European databases on environmental and biological data (http://edit.csic.es/Databases.html), includes:
- Databases on surface units (administrative units and regular equal-area units): Sources of the GIS layers of surface units available at the Geoplatform (http://edit.csic.es/).
- Databases on environmental data: Sources of the GIS layers of environmental variables available at the Geoplatform, together with other interesting databases on various environmental issues at the global and European extent.
- Databases on biological data: Taxonomic databases for the whole biota of for specific groups.

EDIT geoplatform (http://edit.csic.es/GISdownloads.html) provides standard GIS layers of surface units (countries, squares, ...) to evaluate the spatial distribution of occurrence data -spatial completeness-, and standard GIS layers of environmental variables (climate, topography,...) to evaluate weather occurrence data represent adequately the gradients of environmental variation -environmental completeness-.

The report C5.45 (Identified and described suitable taxonomic tools), the cybertaxonomic platform architecture changed from a set of loosely coupled already existing taxonomic tools (geographic, descriptive, publishing, etc.) to a system based on a common data model (CDM) which uses the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and builds the ground for other applications interfacing with core CDM based data storages.
The Component can be downloaded here.

This document outlines the means of linking search results in the Virtual Taxonomic Library (ViTaL), currently at the initial stages of development at the Natural History Museum (London) with content held in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), an important and growing repository of freely available taxonomic literature, which will be one of the sources available for searching by ViTaL users.
A draft collections development policy is also included.
The component can be downloaded here.

This document sets out an analysis of the results of the requirements gathering phase carried out by staff at the Natural History Museum (London) for the ViTaL bibliographic data and literature search tools project.
The requirements where collected through a combinations of consultations with taxonomists and library staff, and also though a questionnaire circulated to subscribers of the Taxacom mailing list. The collected responses to the questionnaire and additional comments can be seen in EDIT Component C5.18 ViTaL requirements report.

The component can be downloaded here.

Software recommendations for system components of ViTaL, the Virtual Taxonomic Library, are as follows:
1 Bibliographic reference harvesting, aggregation and search modules
• The choice of application server framework and language is still open and will be decided in consultation with the development team.
2 Web application framework
• Drupal with standard and bespoke modules.
3 Metasearching and linking
Ex Libris Group applications
Metalib for metasearching, with the X-Server API module
SFX OpenURL link resolver and context management tools

The current component captures all details of existing software processes, that are practiced for inventorying purposes under the taxonomic researcher community.

The initial EDIT work plan assumed that the Platform for Cybertaxonomy would be a set of loosely coupled taxonomic tools complying with certain information standards, which are to be defined by the project. Preferably, these tools are already existing ones rather than software, which had to be developed from scratch within the framework of EDIT. Therefore activities in work package 5 focus very much on the testing and assessment of software already in use and development capacities should be directed to extension and modification of selected solutions.