NBII Supports Development of the United States Virtual Herbarium (USVH)

Ms. Elizabeth Sellers, Manager, NBII Botany Project, is providing national NBII coordination and representation as a member of the Steering Committee of the United States Virtual Herbarium (USVH) project. The USVH is the primary project of an alliance of U.S. herbaria, regional herbarium networks, universities, and other organizations and individuals from across the country and its territories to digitize all botanical specimens in U.S. herbaria. Ms. Sellers and several NBII Program representatives (J. Carlino, J. Freeney, M. Lane, G. Palanisamy, L. Russell, and I. SanGil), participated in a recent NSF-sponsored workshop where 64 scientists and herbarium curators worked to define the USVH concept, organizational and technological infrastructure, and identify issues and tasks associated with its continued development. In our capacity as the U.S. Node to Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and a nationally recognized authority on bioinformatics, the NBII will provide expertise on data hosting and publishing, and help guide the USVH project through participation at regional, national, and international levels.

(Photo: Alpine primrose (Primula angustifolia) in bloom. Contributed by the Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian. Photo by © 2008 Ted Niehaus. )

Regional Biodiversity Portal Toolkit

 The Pacific Basin Information Node (PBIN) technical staff is participating in the development of a Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) Nodes Portal Toolkit (NPT). The primary goal of the portal toolkit project is to develop an open-source platform for aggregation and dissemination of regional biodiversity-related content. Content will include but not be limited to species factsheets, observation records, publications, and spatial data.  In December 2009, GBIF Node Managers (including PBIN technical staff) met in Montreal to explore the development of the NPT. The group developed a draft action plan that will be carried out by        representatives from PBIN, the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility, and the African Biodiversity consortium.  Initial tasks will be to conduct a user requirements document and implement a draft content management system based on the London Natural History Museum ScratchPads biodiversity portal project. A test interface will be demonstrated at the GBIF Nodes meeting in Seoul, Korea, in October 2010.

(Photo: Red-eyed Tree Frog (Agalychnis callidryas), Costa Rica.  Photo by Gregory Basco, 2003.  Courtesy of GBIF)

GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit for Helpdesk Experts

The United States National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) program, in collaboration with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), has developed and is supporting an Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) to facilitate access, discovery, and use of collections and observational data. A new training CD on the GBIF IPT has recently been published. This CD, based on materials from the Helpdesk Experts Workshop on the GBIF IPT , is a compilation of presentations, promotional materials, technical documents, videos, and online resources. The Helpdesk Experts Workshop was designed to:

"provide a selected group of technically capable people with extensive knowledge on the GBIF IPT so they can get more involved in the development and deployment of the tool, acting as a distributed helpdesk network for the benefit of their communities and regions."

The CD may be obtained by visiting the GBIF Training CDs page and clicking the link. The CDs are available in .ISO format and it is suggested on the Web site to use the image burning feature of your CD burning software to convert them into actual CDs.

About the GBIF IPT (from the IPT Web site):

"The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) is an open source, Java (TM) based web application that connects and serves three types of biodiversity data: taxon primary occurrence data, taxon checklists, and general resource metadata. The data registered in a GBIF IPT instance is connected to the GBIF distributed network and made available for public consultation and use. This tool is made freely available for both those who wish to use it to publish their data and those who wish to participate in its development, documentation, and helpdesk."

To learn more about GBIF and NBII collaborations, please visit the NBII GBIF network Web site.

New NBII Search Debut

The week of August 10, the USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) launched a new search engine. The new NBII search is designed to support the discovery of and provide access to critical national and global biological information and data. The new NBII search engine is based on the Vivisimo Velocity search platform and features dynamic clustering, faceted searching, extensive source control, integration with the NBII LIFE image library, and the ability to simultaneously search critical global and national biodiversity resources such as the Global Biological Information Facility (GBIF), Amphibiaweb, and the Missouri Botanical’s TROPICOS database. The new NBII search supports flexible information acquisition through web site/database crawling and real time federated resource searching. Finally, the new NBII search supports the custom development of multiple information indexes, geospatial integration with Google Maps, visualization, and flexible control over search result displays. The new NBII search is available on the NBII Portal at http://www.nbii.gov/.

NBII and GBIF booth at ESA Conference 2009 in Albuquerque, New Mexico

The USGS National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) will have a joint booth in the exhibits hall. The USGS-NBII is the U.S. national node of GBIF. You are especially invited to come and learn how to install and use the new GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT), for enabling access to, sharing, and integration of your specimen and observation records with those of the international community.

The Ecological Society of America 94th Annual Meeting will be held August 2-7, 2009 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Visit the ESA website for more information and registration.

On Friday, August 7, 2009 from 8:00 AM-11:30 AM in the Brazos, Albuquerque Convention Center, Annie Simpson from the US Geological Survey will be leading the session on Standards, Protocols, and Tools for Sharing Ecological Information: Data Interoperability on a Global Scale (session OOS 49). Liz Sellers will be facilitator for this oral session. Other USGS representation will include Annette Olson, Viv Hutchison, and Lisa Zolly. For more details, visit the OOS 49 session page of the ESA website.

Organizer: Annie Simpson, US Geological Survey
Co-organizers: Elizabeth Sellers, National Biological Information Infrastructure, and Viv Hutchison, US Geological Survey