May 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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Country name reconciliation
by Shorthouse, David 27 May '13

27 May '13

Folks, The Canadensys development team, http://www.canadensys.net is looking for efficient, low-maintenance ways to validate and reconcile data in its National cache of occurrence data. We are working on a Java library to initially tackle single-field Darwin Core validations, https://github.com/Canadensys/narwhal-processor. We hope this library is sufficiently generalized for uses outside our project. Our current challenge is to reconcile country names, which requires access to an up-to-date, well-maintained knowledge base of country names, their alternative representations (possibly multilingual), and mappings to known misspellings. For performance reasons, we'd like this thesaurus to be embedded in the library, but with the capacity to be periodically refreshed with data pulled from external resources such as dbpedia.org. This clearly has ties to semantic web thinking and, because we're new to the tools and services in this space, we'd like to solicit pointers and feedback such that we build this part of our library with maximal benefit to other projects. We started collecting thoughts here: https://github.com/Canadensys/narwhal-processor/issues/14. Cheers, David P. Shorthouse Christian Gendreau

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Doctoral research fellow at the Natural History Museum in Oslo and GBIF-Norway
by Dag Endresen 19 May '13

19 May '13

Dear all, The Natural History Museum in Oslo offers 4 year PhD position. The subject of the PhD project is "Thermophilous vascular plants: data quality, distributional constraints and responses to climate change". The PhD position will include a component of research related to biodiversity informatics with connections to the Norwegian participant node to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF-Norway). GBIF-Norway is hosted by the Natural History Museum of the University in Oslo. For more information see: http://uio.easycruit.com/vacancy/973441/71922?iso=no Deadline for application is: 2 June 2013. Regards Dag -- Dag Endresen, PhD Private email: dag.endresen(a)gmail.com Work email: dag.endresen(a)nhm.uio.no Mobile: +47 4061 2982

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Fwd: Please participate (very brief survey!) for data contributors, curators, administrators, repository developers
by Hilmar Lapp 17 May '13

17 May '13

Begin forwarded message: From: "Greenberg, Jane" <janeg(a)email.unc.edu> Subject: Please participate (very brief survey!) for data contributors, curators, administrators, repository developers Date: May 17, 2013 1:45:53 PM EDT To: Bryan <pbryan.heidorn(a)gmail.com>, "Moen, William" <William.Moen(a)unt.edu>, Hilmar Lapp <hlapp(a)nescent.org> Hola guys.. this survey is about the use of controlled vocabularies, and comes out of HIVE work, connected w/DataONE and DFC datanets. We’d love to reach the GBIF community. Would one of you be able to forward? We’d be grateful. [...] On behalf of Jane Greenberg, Director of Metadata Research Center -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings all, (Please participate, and feel free to forward to other relevant lists) The following survey examines controlled vocabulary use and challenges. The survey is for data contributors, curators, administrators, and/or repository developers. Completing the survey takes approximately 10 minutes (or less) to complete. To complete the survey, please click the following link: https://unc.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3fU0xOeRbH6jntb. NOTE: If you are unable to click on the link directly, please type the entire link into the address or location field at the top of your web browser, and press the ENTER key on your keyboard to access the survey. The survey is supported by a US DataNet/DataONE supplement to explore controlled vocabulary use within and across a broad spectrum of data repositories, including but not limited to the U.S. DataNet initiatives. Sincerely, Chelcie Rowell ---------------------------------------------------------------- Chelcie Rowell Research Assistant, Metadata Research Center School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chelcie(a)live.unc.edu | 770.862.0750

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NISO/DCMI Webinar: Semantic Mashups Across Large, Heterogeneous Institutions: Experiences from the VIVO Service
by DCMI Announce 07 May '13

07 May '13

******************Please excuse the cross postings****************** Join NISO/DCMI for our joint May webinar --Webinar: Semantic Mashups Across Large, Heterogeneous Institutions: Experiences from the VIVO Service --Date: May 22, 2013 --Time: 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time - UTC 17:00:00) (World Clock: http://bit.ly/157qF2S) --Event webpage: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/vivo/ ========================================================================= ABOUT THE WEBINAR: VIVO is a semantic web application focused on discovering researchers and research publications in the life sciences. The service, which uses open-source software originally developed and implemented at Cornell University, operates by harvesting data about researcher interests, activities, and accomplishments from academic, administrative, professional, and funding sources. Using a built-in, editable ontology for describing things such as People, Courses, and Publications, data is transformed into a Semantic-Web-compliant form. VIVO provides automated and self-updating processes for improving data quality and authenticity. Starting with a classic Google-style search box, VIVO users can browse search results structured around people, research interests, courses, publications, and the like -- data that can be exposed for re-use by other systems in a machine-readable format. This webinar, held by a veteran at the Albert R. Mann Library Information Technology Services department at Cornell, where the VIVO project was born, presents the perspective of a software developer on the practicalities of building a high-quality Semantic-Web search service on existing data maintained in dozens of formats and software platforms at large, diverse institutions. The talk will highlight services that leverage the Semantic Web platform in innovative ways, e.g., for finding researchers based on the text content of a particular Web page and for visualizing networks of collaboration across institutions. SPEAKER: John Fereira, a senior programmer/analyst and technology strategist at Cornell University, is a contributing member of the VIVO project team. He also consults on issues related to information technology in higher education with an emphasis on open-source, modular, distributed software systems and is currently working on systems based on VIVO software for international Agricultural Information systems communities. Registration closes one hour before the webinar begins. For more information and to register, visit the event webpage: http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/dcmi/vivo/

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