November 2013 - tdwg - lists.tdwg.org

In Memoriam Dr Richard Pankhurst
by Mergen Patricia 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

Dear Colleagues, On behalf of TDWG we are very sorry to inform you that Richard John Pankhurst passed away on Tuesday 26 March after fighting oesophageal cancer for many years. He was a very important contributer and friend of TDWG, as can be judged from his short CV from the BioCISE directory: Dr Richard Pankhurst began his career in computing in the computer section at CERN, Geneva in 1963, and moving back to Cambridge to work on Computer-Aided Design in 1966. In 1971 he moved to the Botany School, Cambridge to begin work on his PANKEY programs for identification and key construction. This was continued at the Botany department of the Natural History Museum from 1974 until 1991, where he was for many years curator of the British herbarium, and also worked on the Flora Meso-Americana. "Biological Identification", 1978, was the first textbook on computer methods in identification. A new version of this book was published by C.U.P in 1991. Also published in that year was the Flora of the Outer Hebrides. With over 50 publications of refereed papers and books in the fields of taxonomic computing he has made major contributions to these fields. Dr. Pankhurst has been very active recently in programming and managing botanical databases (Flora Europaea, BSBI database and PANDORA) and systems with images. He was appointed Principal Scientific Officer at the RGB Edinburgh in 1991. Dr. Pankhurst served on various committees of British and international organizations, among others. Botanical Society of the British Isles, Committee for Scotland and Database Committee. Botanical Society of Scotland, Council. Taxonomic Databases Working Group, convener of Descriptors Group. International Organisation for Plant Information, co-convener of Information Systems Committee, Checklist Committee. Dr. Pankhurst was the head of the Department of Taxonomic Computing at RGBE. After his official retirement, he compiled a large database of the Rose family. His work on recording the wild flowers of the Outer Hebrides took him frequently to these remote islands on behalf of the Botanical Society of the British Isles. His interest in Taraxacum (dandelions) was acknowledged when a species found only on St. Kilda was named *Taraxacum pankhurstianum*. In Richard, not only a very important scientist was lost to our community, but also a very pleasant collaborator and friend . <patricia.mergen(a)africamuseum.be> Dr. Patricia Mergen (General Secretary of TDWG, on behalf of the Executive Committee) Head of Biodiversity Information and Cybertaxonomy Royal Museum for Central Africa Leuvensesteenweg 13 B-3080 Tervuren Belgium + 32 2 769 5 *626* patricia.mergen(a)africamuseum.be

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BioVeL Training Workshops Autumn 2013
by Jong, Yde de 19 Mar '14

19 Mar '14

[cid:_2_0D2267A80D226240004E96E980257BF0] BioVeL, a virtual laboratory for biodiversity research data, is offering two training workshops «Introduction to workflows for taxonomic refinement, biogeographic analysis, and species distribution modelling» November 26-27, 2013, Cardiff University, UK Description of the workshop and registration<http://frb.eole-emailing.net/l.php?q=C7R0bdUyZhX7O4KA8AcP&l=mhEt9SDFpiH4jmM…> «Building workflows with Taverna workbench» December 5-6, 2013, Manchester, UK Description of the workshop and registration<http://frb.eole-emailing.net/l.php?q=C7R0bdUyZhX7O4KA8AcP&l=qx%2B%2F%2F2hFK…> Note that these training workshops are free to attend but registration is required. The number of participants is limited. For further information, please write contact(a)biovel.eu<mailto:contact@biovel.eu>. More information on BioVeL: www.biovel.eu<http://frb.eole-emailing.net/l.php?q=C7R0bdUyZhX7O4KA8AcP&l=ai9CNhKZGxdfg76…> BioVeL is funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Programme (FP7) as part of its e-Infrastructures activity (Grant no. 283359).

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Searching for grad students to fill FSU herbarium curator position
by Austin Mast 22 Nov '13

22 Nov '13

I would greatly appreciate it if you would pass this announcement on to individuals who might be interested in this opportunity. I am keen to find students who are interested in gaining experience as a curator of a biodiversity research collection (Florida State University's Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium; http://www.herbarium.bio.fsu.edu/) while working with me towards a graduate degree in plant diversity research (e.g., systematics, ecology, evolution, biogeography, or biodiversity informatics). Staff members of the herbarium have played leadership roles in digitization of biodiversity specimens locally (e.g., with the Deep South Plant Specimen Imaging Project and a collaboration that led to digitization of Tall Timbers Research Station's biodiversity collections) and nationally (e.g., with Morphbank and iDigBio). The herbarium curator is currently treated as a graduate research assistantship, and students have traditionally held the position for 1–3 years (see http://www.bio.fsu.edu/fin_sup_index.php for a description of financial support for our graduate students). Individuals filling the curator position would not be expected to fill the position during their entire time as graduate students, but would be encouraged to gain teaching and lab/field research experience as well. FSU has a strong ecology and evolution program (http://www.bio.fsu.edu/ and http://www.bio.fsu.edu/ee/ for more details), and the campus is situated in the beautiful Florida panhandle—one of the continent's biodiversity hotspots. Applications are due by Dec. 1, 2013 (for details see http://www.bio.fsu.edu/gradadmit.php). Interested individuals should also contact me directly (contact info in signature). Thanks! Austin Austin Mast ____________________________________ Associate Professor · Director, Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium · Associate Editor, Systematic Biology and Systematic Botany · Treasurer, American Society of Plant Taxonomists · Steering Committee Member, iDigBio, The National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections Department of Biological Science · 319 Stadium Drive · Florida State University · Tallahassee, FL 32306-4295 · U.S.A. Office is King Life Science Building, room 4065 · Lab is King Life Science Building, rooms 4068 and 4084 · Herbarium is Biological Science Unit One, room 100 Voice: 1 (850) 645-1500 · Fax: 1 (850) 645-8447 · amast(a)bio.fsu.edu ____________________________________

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TR: Job offer : Senior Software Engineer / France
by Rovellotti olivier 21 Nov '13

21 Nov '13

Dear all Natural Solutions is looking into hiring a software developer to work on various Biodiversity Informatics projects. The Job is based in Marseille, and some French would be welcome. Full job description can be found here: http://natural-solutions.squarespace.com/job-senior-dev Kind regards Rovellotti Olivier Directeur Natural Solutions 00 33 (0)6 09 57 66 53 Twitt me: @orovellotti <https://twitter.com/orovellotti> <http://www.natural-solutions.eu> www.natural-solutions.eu

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Job offer : Senior Software Engineer / France
by Rovellotti olivier 18 Nov '13

18 Nov '13

Dear all Natural Solutions is looking into hiring a software developer to work on various Biodiversity Informatics projects. The Job is based in Marseille, and some French would be welcome. Full job description can be found here: http://natural-solutions.squarespace.com/job-senior-dev Kind regards Rovellotti Olivier Directeur Natural Solutions 00 33 (0)6 09 57 66 53 Twit me: @orovellotti <https://twitter.com/orovellotti> <http://www.natural-solutions.eu> www.natural-solutions.eu

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NISO/DCMI Webinar with Thomas Hickey: Cooperative Authority Control
by DCMI Announce 13 Nov '13

13 Nov '13

***Please excuse the cross-posting*** =============================================================== NISO/DCMI Webinar: Cooperative Authority Control PRESENTER: Thomas Hickey, OCLC Research DATE: December 4, 2013 TIME: 1:00pm - 2:30pm Eastern (18:00-19:30 UTC) World Clock: http://bit.ly/1aRZlbz INFORMATION & REGISTRATION: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/authority/ =============================================================== ABOUT THE WEBINAR: Libraries around the world have a long tradition of maintaining authority files to assure the consistent presentation and indexing of names. As library authority files have become available online, the authority data has become accessible -- and many have been published as Linked Open Data (LOD) -- but names in one library authority file typically had no link to corresponding records for persons and organizations in other library authority files. After a successful experiment in matching the Library of Congress/NACO authority file with the German National Library's authority file, an online system called the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) [1] was developed to facilitate sharing by ingesting, matching, and displaying the relations between records in multiple authority files. VIAF has grown from three source files in 2007 to more than two dozen files today. The system harvests authority records, enhances them with bibliographic information and brings them together into clusters when it is confident the records describe the same identity. Although the most visible part of VIAF is a HTML interface, the API beneath it supports a linked data view of VIAF with URIs representing the identities themselves, not just URIs for the clusters. It supports names for person, corporations, geographic entities, works, and expressions. With English, French, German, Spanish interfaces (and a Japanese in process), the system is used around the world, with over a million queries per day. The service harvests some 30 million authority records, enhances them with information from 100 million bibliographic records to produce a file of 20+ million clusters, each representing a person, organization, jurisdiction, work, or expression. In addition to supporting a Web browser HTML interface, the API to VIAF supports content negotiation for other views, such as RDF-XML and MARC-21. Bulk dumps of the VIAF clusters are available under the ODC-By attribution license. The Webinar will cover some of the challenges VIAF meets in dealing with many different formats and approaches to describing identities, the relationship of VIAF to the source authority files, to other identity systems such as ORCID and ISNI, VIAF's approach to sustainability, governance and persistence, and how ambiguity is recognized and managed. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Thomas Hickey [2] is Chief Scientist at OCLC where he helped found OCLC Research. Current interests include metadata creation and editing systems, authority control, parallel systems for bibliographic processing, and information retrieval and display. In addition to implementing VIAF, his group looks into exploring Web access to metadata, identification of FRBR works and expressions in WorldCat, the algorithmic creation of authorities, and the characterization of collections. He has an undergraduate degree in Physics and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science. REGISTRATION: Registration is per site (access for one computer) and closes at 12:00 pm Eastern (17:00 UTC) on December 4, 2013. Discounts are available for NISO and DCMI members and students. For more information and to register, visit the event webpage: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/authority/ =============================================================== [1] http://viaf.org/ [2] http://www.oclc.org/research/people/hickeyt.html

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Museum Informatics Job
by pdpolly 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

------------------------------------- Full-time position in museum informatics ------------------------------------- The Center for Biological Research Collections at Indiana University invites applications for a full-time position in museum informatics. We seek a project coordinator for the development of digital resources from IU’s plant, animal, and fossil collections with skills in programing, biological nomenclature, and digital 3D data who will coordinate activities digitization and data processing activities. A graduate degree in museum informatics (or equivalent experience) is required, as are skills in computer programming and SQL databases. The appointment will be for four years pending satisfactory evaluation. Additional information is available at http://www.indiana.edu/~cbrc/search.html. For full consideration, candidates should review the application requirements and submit their application at: http://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/616. Questions regarding the position or application process can be directed to: Professor David Polly (pdpolly(a)indiana.edu). Indiana University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer; women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. P. David Polly Professor, Geological Sciences Adjunct, Anthropology and Biology Indiana University 1001 E. 10th Street Bloomington, IN 47405-1405 pdpolly(a)indiana.edu +1 (812) 855-7994 http://mypage.iu.edu/~pdpolly/

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