Searching the Resource Information Network

Our searching services are busy right now. Please try again later

  • Register
X
Forgot Password

If you have forgotten your password you can enter your email here and get a temporary password sent to your email.

X

Leaving Community

Are you sure you want to leave this community? Leaving the community will revoke any permissions you have been granted in this community.

No
Yes

The notes from nature tool for unlocking biodiversity records from museum records through citizen science.

Andrew Hill | Robert Guralnick | Arfon Smith | Andrew Sallans | Rosemary Gillespie | Michael Denslow | Joyce Gross | Zack Murrell | Tim Conyers | Peter Oboyski | Joan Ball | Andrea Thomer | Robert Prys-Jones | Javier de Torre | Patrick Kociolek | Lucy Fortson
ZooKeys | 2012

Legacy data from natural history collections contain invaluable and irreplaceable information about biodiversity in the recent past, providing a baseline for detecting change and forecasting the future of biodiversity on a human-dominated planet. However, these data are often not available in formats that facilitate use and synthesis. New approaches are needed to enhance the rates of digitization and data quality improvement. Notes from Nature provides one such novel approach by asking citizen scientists to help with transcription tasks. The initial web-based prototype of Notes from Nature is soon widely available and was developed collaboratively by biodiversity scientists, natural history collections staff, and experts in citizen science project development, programming and visualization. This project brings together digital images representing different types of biodiversity records including ledgers , herbarium sheets and pinned insects from multiple projects and natural history collections. Experts in developing web-based citizen science applications then designed and built a platform for transcribing textual data and metadata from these images. The end product is a fully open source web transcription tool built using the latest web technologies. The platform keeps volunteers engaged by initially explaining the scientific importance of the work via a short orientation, and then providing transcription "missions" of well defined scope, along with dynamic feedback, interactivity and rewards. Transcribed records, along with record-level and process metadata, are provided back to the institutions.  While the tool is being developed with new users in mind, it can serve a broad range of needs from novice to trained museum specialist. Notes from Nature has the potential to speed the rate of biodiversity data being made available to a broad community of users.

Pubmed ID: 22859890

Research resources used in this publication

None found

Additional research tools detected in this publication

Antibodies used in this publication

None found

Associated grants

None

Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.

This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


GitHub (tool)

RRID:SCR_002630

A web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system offering powerful collaboration, code review, and code management. It offers both paid plans for private repositories, and free accounts for open source projects. Large or small, every repository comes with the same powerful tools. These tools are open to the community for public projects and secure for private projects. Features include: * Integrated issue tracking * Collaborative code review * Easily manage teams within organizations * Text entry with understated power * A growing list of programming languages and data formats * On the desktop and in your pocket - Android app and mobile web views let you keep track of your projects on the go.

View all literature mentions