December 2006 - tdwg - lists.tdwg.org

EMu Contract Application Support Specialist at NMNH, Smithsonian Institution
by Orrell, Thomas 12 Dec '06

12 Dec '06

NMNH Informatics is soliciting prospective contractors for an Application Support Specialist for EMu. Please forward this to anyone that you might know that would be interested in bidding on the contract. The Request for Quotation (RFQ) can be found at: http://acsmith.si.edu/rfq/RFQ_EMu_Application_Support.doc (MS Word) http://acsmith.si.edu/rfq/RFQ_EMu_Application_Support.pdf (PDF) OVERVIEW: The Smithsonian Institution (SI), National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Information Technology Department, located at 10th Street at Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20560 seeks an Application Support Specialist -EMu (Electronic Museum system) to provide professional services. The Contractor shall provide support for users of the Museum's primary Research and Collections Information System (RCIS) during public operation hours (Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. ET, excluding Federal holidays). The RCIS is based on KE EMu software ("EMu") from KE Software. NMNH has undertaken a program to develop a modern, integrated RCIS and foster similar efforts within the international collections community. RCIS is a distributed, multimedia system supporting the documentation, management, analysis, and delivery of the collections and research resources held and produced by the Museum. The foundation of the system is a series of databases describing: specimens and their current and past uses, observations taken in the field, collecting sites and habitats, geographic areas, species and higher taxa, cultural groups, and relevant literature. The system is based on a multi-server architecture, integrating text databases, digital objects including image and sound recordings, files containing results of scientific analyses, geographic information, and data thesauri. The Contractor may be in the business of performing work of this type; independent, or college intern. QUESTIONS Due no later than December 18, 2006, 4:00 p.m. ET * Questions shall be submitted not later than the date and time established for the RFQ. Should any question cause a material concern that may have some effect on the basis of award and/or other material elements of the RFQ, an electronic Amendment shall be furnished to all prospective contractors. Furnish questions to the COTR. RFQ DEADLINE Due no later than December 22, 2006, 4:00 p.m. ET * Prospective contractors shall submit electronic responses to the attention of the COTR, on or before, but not later than date and time established for the RFQ. Late submission may be subject to not meeting the requirements of the RFQ, unless, it is the only submission received. Thank you, Thomas M. Orrell, Ph.D. Research Biologist ITIS Program Manager/Acting Informatics Branch Chief Smithsonian Institution PO Box 37012 National Museum of Natural History, W623, MRC-153 Washington, DC 20013-7012 Phone: 202 633-2151 Cell: 202-294-0514 Fax: 202 786-2934 Email: orrellt(a)si.edu URL: http://www.itis.gov For UPS and FedEx shipments please use: National Museum of Natural History, MRC-153 10th and Constitution Avenues, NW Washington, DC 20560-0153

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FW: Wikipedia and Geonames. was: AW: ANN: RDF Book Mashup - IntegratingWeb 2.0 data sources like Amazon and Google into the Semantic Web
by Donat Agosti 02 Dec '06

02 Dec '06

Here a new thread in simile, a semantic web list serve, which might interest those involved in extracting geographic names. Donat -----Original Message----- From: general-bounces(a)simile.mit.edu [mailto:general-bounces@simile.mit.edu] On Behalf Of Chris Bizer Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2006 10:36 AM To: Richard Cyganiak; Richard Newman Cc: semantic-web(a)w3.org; 'Damian Steer'; general(a)simile.mit.edu; 'Karl Dubost' Subject: Wikipedia and Geonames. was: AW: ANN: RDF Book Mashup - IntegratingWeb 2.0 data sources like Amazon and Google into the Semantic Web >>> I wish that wikipedia had a fully exportable database >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_films >>> >>> For example, being able to export all data of this movie as RDF, >>> maybe a templating issue at least for the box on the right. >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2046_%28film%29 >> >> Should be an easy job for a SIMILE like screen scraper. >> >> If you start scraping down from the Wikipedia film list, you should get >> a fair amount of data. Some further ideas along these lines. What about scraping information about geograpic places like countries and cities from Wikipedia and linking the data to geonames (http://www.geonames.org/ontology/)? Something like http://XXX/wikipedia/Embrun owl:sameAs http://sws.geonames.org/3020251/ The Wikipedia articles about countries and cities all follow relatively similar structures (for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin) so it should be easy to scrape them. They already contain links to other places, like the Boroughs and localities in Berlin, which could easily be transformed to RDF links. Many places have geo-coordinates which together with the place name allow scrapers to automatically create links to localities from geonames. Wikipedia is GNU, thus there aren't any problems with licensing as with the Google and Amazon data. As most articles follow the same structure, an approach to implement such a information service could be to: - Use a crawling/screenscraping framework that fills a relational database with the information from Wikipedia. - Use D2R Server (http://sites.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/d2r-server/) to publish the database on the Web and to provide a SPARQL end-point for querying. I once read about some pretty sophisticated screen-scraping frameworks that fill relational databases with data from websites but forgot the exact links. Does anybody know? Cheers, Chris ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Cyganiak" <richard(a)cyganiak.de> To: "Richard Newman" <r.newman(a)reading.ac.uk> Cc: "Chris Bizer" <chris(a)bizer.de>; "'Karl Dubost'" <karl(a)w3.org>; "'Damian Steer'" <damian.steer(a)hp.com>; <semantic-web(a)w3.org> Sent: Friday, December 01, 2006 7:19 PM Subject: Re: AW: ANN: RDF Book Mashup - Integrating Web 2.0 data sources like Amazon and Google into the Semantic Web > > On 1 Dec 2006, at 18:27, Richard Newman wrote: >> Systemone have Wikipedia dumped monthly into RDF: >> >> http://labs.systemone.at/wikipedia3 >> >> A public SPARQL endpoint is on their roadmap, but it's only 47 million >> triples, so you should be able to load it in a few minutes on your >> machine and run queries locally. > > Unfortunately this only represents the hyperlink structure and basic > article metadata in RDF. It does no scraping of data from info boxes or > article content. Might be interesting for analyzing Wikipedia's link > structure or social dynamics, but not for content extraction. > > Richard > > > >> >> -R >> >> >> On 1 Dec 2006, at 4:30 AM, Chris Bizer wrote: >> >>>> I wish that wikipedia had a fully exportable database >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_films >>>> >>>> For example, being able to export all data of this movie as RDF, >>>> maybe a templating issue at least for the box on the right. >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2046_%28film%29 >>> >>> Should be an easy job for a SIMILE like screen scraper. >>> >>> If you start scraping down from the Wikipedia film list, you should get >>> a >>> fair amount of data. >>> >>> To all the Semantic Wiki guys: Has anybody already done something like >>> this? >>> Are there SPARQL end-points/repositories for Wikipedia-scraped data? >> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ General mailing list General(a)simile.mit.edu http://simile.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/general

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Call: Technical Author for GBIF Data Portal documentation
by Donald Hobern 01 Dec '06

01 Dec '06

Call: Technical Author for GBIF Data Portal documentation --------------------------------------------------------- The GBIF Data Portal (http://www.gbif.net/) is a central component of the GBIF network and is currently being replaced with a new implementation (test version on-line at http://newportal.gbif.org) which will offer richer functionality for users. GBIF is seeking the services of a technical author who has an understanding of biodiversity data to develop online documentation and tutorial materials for this portal. In addition, this person will contribute to the development of an explanatory video loop based on the documentation materials. The following deliverables are required (all as on-line web pages): 1. Quick introduction to using the portal (includes GBIF data use agreement, http://www.gbif.org/DataProviders/Agreements/DUA) 2. A set of three to five short “how-to” guides to performing useful tasks with the portal (portions of these will also be used for demonstration videos). 3. Instructions for other web sites on making links to the portal or embedding elements from the portal. 4. Guidance for new data providers (includes GBIF data sharing agreement, http://www.gbif.org/DataProviders/Agreements/DSA) 5. Technical documentation for software developers that explains how to use the web service interfaces offered by the portal, and develop new visualization and analysis tools to be linked to the portal. The key skills required for this role are: 1. Capability to explain technical tasks and instructions in clear, simple, highly understandable English. 2. Experience in developing online documentation and text for demonstration videos. 3. Understanding of biodiversity data (in particular, species occurrence data and taxonomic information). A pre-existing working background knowledge of the GBIF mission would be a significant benefit. The GBIF Secretariat expects to place a contract for a total of approximately four months’ work (the majority in late 2006/early 2007, but part-time throughout the first half of 2007), including some time working with staff at the GBIF Secretariat in Copenhagen. How to apply ------------ Interested applicants should send the following by e-mail to Donald Hobern, GBIF Deputy Director for Informatics (dhobern(a)gbif.org) by 30 November 2006: 1. Curriculum vitae 2. Description of relevant experience and skills 3. Details on availability through June 2007 4. Expected remuneration ------------------------------------------------------------ Donald Hobern (dhobern(a)gbif.org) Deputy Director for Informatics Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45-35321483 Mobile: +45-28751483 Fax: +45-35321480 ------------------------------------------------------------

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