EDIT WP5 Platform for Cybertaxonomy

The Global References Index to Biodiversity (GRIB) prototype by the Head office of the Common Library Network (VZG) has been enhanced by a Digitisation Management Tool. The URL of the GRIB has changed to http://gso.gbv.de/DB=1.83/ to providing full functionality of this tool. It serves two groups of users: scientists and librarians. Scientists in the need for online access to digitised literature can search the GRIB and nominate titles to be digitised, that are not available online yet.

The Global References Index to Biodiversity (GRIB) prototype by the Head office of the Common Library Network GBV (VZG) is the joint literature index of EDIT’s Virtual Taxonomic Library (ViTaL) and the Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe (BHL-Europe). The GRIB has now been greatly enhanced by adding the bibliographic records from the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), including hyperlinks to the digitised items.

EDIT exemplar groups as well as several other initiatives have now started to use the CDM taxonomic editor as their primary software tool for data capture and maintenance of their community information stores. In the course of their work several demands on new features and refinements of existing functionalities were made. The feature requests were thoroughly analyzed and discussed with the WP5 developer group and led to a significantly revised Editor design and implementation, which will be part of the EDIT Platform version 3 to be released in September 2010.

In January 2008 and in March 2009 the first two versions of the Common Data Model (CDM) were frozen and documented. The first version was primarily based on experiences using existing data models and formats and attempted to cover all data elements relevant for the taxonomic workflow, so that data coming from different applications could be stored and processed with a single database. Version 2 included additions and refinements that came up as requirements from CDM Users and developers of the JAVA-based programming library on top of the CDM.

This report is to get an idea of the time, hardware and Software requirements for setting up and installing a MapViewer Tool mirror. It includes recommendations for the future use and sustainability of the service. This report has been compiled by James Davy and Franck Theeten with input from Patricia Mergen, and colleagues of the EDIT project.

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Several tools already exist to manage descriptive data or to use and to analyse these data(Xper², DiversityDescriptions, Linnaeus, or other tools). These tools have hence proven their interest and their accessibility for taxonomists even if they have little or no previous computer experience.

The fifth ISTC meeting will be held on October 7th 8th, 2010 in the Conference Room (A105) on the 2nd Floor of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8, D-14191 Berlin, Germany.

Please note that the meeting is open only to ISTC members.

This report describes possibilities to visualize and analyze ATBI+M data in the EDIT geoplatform tools paying special attention to inventory completeness assessment. It has been compiled by Marcin Gąsior (MIIZPAN) with a generous input from Pere Roca Ristol (CSIC), Alexander Kroupa (MFN), Patricia Mergen (RMCA) and the colleagues from the EDIT developer mailing list.

The general objective of the activity covers the design of a security infrastructure and the introduction of a secure Single Sign-On service (SSO) for the platform. The task to be achieved within the forth JPA concerns the integration of EDIT service providers within the Community Single Sign-On (CSSO) security infrastructure. CSSO enables the various EDIT service providers to protect their services and resources defining individual access control policies, while users can access different services using only one identity.

The prototype service to generate printed publications from the CDM (Printservice) consists of an interface that lets a user select a classification or specific parts of a classification, a system to harvest the required data from the CDM REST Services (Webservice) and XSL stylesheets to process the acquired data into the Open Document Format (ODF). Being a prototype, the system does not claim to be complete, correct or useful in production use.