Contributions to the The University of Minnesota Insect Collection (coden UMSP) began in 1879 with specimens of insects and spiders from the North Shore of Lake Superior. During the last 130 years, the Collection’s holdings have grown from a regional collection of 3,000 specimens to a major national and international resource of almost 3,600,000 specimens. Research projects associated with the Collection (Phylogenetic Studies, Revisionary and Monographic Studies, Interactive Keys, Faunistic and Biodiversity Studies) have broad taxonomic and geographic scope and includes taxonomic, phylogenetic, and applied questions. The University of Minnesota Insect Collection maintains three databases (UMSP Collection Management database, UMSP Trichoptera Biota database, The Trichoptera Literature Database (TLD) and contributes to the Tree of Life web project. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
reBiND aims to develop cost-efficient workflows for rescuing legacy databases from biodiversity sciences which are not integrated in an institutional data curation strategy and are, therefore, at risk of getting lost. Click here to watch a short Stop-Motion video which further explains the idea of the project. reBiND builds on a survey and assessment of existing threatened biodiversity databases with a focus on collection and observational data. Priority will be given to data with accessible documentation or expertise for proper interpretation as well as the owner’s permission to publish the data via BioCASE following the BioCASE Code of Conduct for Data and Portal Nodes. reBiND workflows combine software tools for transforming data stored in outdated database systems into well-documented, standardized, and commonly understood XML-formats (e.g. ABCD) with a system for storing, documenting, and publishing the information as a web service. The workflow will be thoroughly tested, refined and documented in a best-practice handbook. reBiND is a three-year project from the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, funded by the LIS-Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The original project title is “Entwicklung von Workflows und Softwarekomponenten zur Rettung lebenswissenschaftlicher Primärdaten” (project number GU 1109/2-1). ... [Information of the supplier]
The modularized Diversity Workbench (=DWB) represents a virtual research environment for multiple scientific purposes with regard to management and analysis of life sciences data. The framework is appropriate to store different kinds of bio- and geodiversity data and facilitates the processing of ecological, molecular biological, observational, collection and taxonomic data. It is capable and flexible enough to be applied as data storage unit for institutional data repositories. The DWB is set up on a xml-enabled relational database system. Clients of every database of the Workbench are used as stand-alone applications and provide supporting functions to clients of corresponding databases. This results in a high flexibility with regard to the conceptual design, enabling sophisticated user administration and a rapid setup of project-specific and user-adapted entry forms. Further, it facilitates the dynamic integration of web services and external data resources. The DWB is work in progress, aiming at developing a set of information models and application components that collaborate through agreed software interfaces. That is, each component of the Workbench applications uses services from other applications, but at the same time does not need to know about the internal design and implementation of them (encapsulation principle). The goal is increased reuse and collaboration across project and national borders. ... [Information of the supplier]
