October 2015 - 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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iDigBio Webinar: Shaping the semantic layer by mining digitised data: iDigBio's plant records and the Environment Ontology (ENVO)
by Deb Paul 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

Hi Everyone, You're all invited to join us at an iDigBio webinar next week: *Shaping the semantic layer by mining digitised data: ** **an encounter between iDigBio's plant records and the Environment Ontology (ENVO) *https://www.idigbio.org/content/webinar-shaping-semantic-layer-mining-digitised-data-encounter-between-idigbios-plant* ** Abstract*: Domain ontologies seek to represent the entities in an area of investigation alongside their interrelations in a logically coherent manner. Domain knowledge is the lifeblood of these ontologies and initiatives such as iDigBio offer valuable repositories which contain both legacy and contemporary knowledge and are ripe for mining. The Environment Ontology (ENVO http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/ENVO) is a domain ontology that is concerned with environments, ecosystems, habitats, and related entities. We performed a cursory text-mining exercise focusing on iDigBio's plant habitat descriptions to learn what terms and phrases the botany community - past and present - have used to describe the environments they sample. The results are being used to guide the creation of new classes and relations in ENVO, ensuring the ontology is fit to represent the environmental aspects of these early waves of digitised plant data. In this webinar, I will describe our approach, some of its early results, and the main challenges we face going forward./There is considerable scope to refine and extend this approach to other digitised data and power synergy between the semantic layer and data repositories./ *Presenters: *Dr. Pier Luigi Buttigieg HGF-MPG Group for Deep Sea Ecology and Technology Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung c/o Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology Celsiusstrasse 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany Email: pbuttigi(a)mpi-bremen.de <mailto:pbuttigi@mpi-bremen.de> and Grant Godden Research Associate, Mint Genome Project Buell Lab http://buell-lab.plantbiology.msu.edu/index.shtml Michigan State University Email: goddengr(a)msu.edu <mailto:goddengr@msu.edu> Former iDigBio Graduate Student, Soltis Lab *Where*: http://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/datamgmt *When:* Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 9:00am to 1:00am EST (Tallahassee, Florida) That's 3:00 pm to 4 pm CET (Berlin, Germany) See you there and please share this posting with other interested parties. Thanks! Deb Paul, et al in the iDigBio Data Management Interest Group (please excuse cross-postings) -- -- Upcoming iDigBio Eventshttps://www.idigbio.org/calendar -- Deborah Paul, iDigBio Technology Specialist Institute for Digital Information, 234 LSB Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-6366

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iDigBio Webinar:, Variations on the theme of tracking loans, gifts, sampling, and more
by Deborah Paul 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

Hi Everyone, What software or programs are the collection's community using to track loans, gifts, donations, sampling events? What's working and what's still challenging? Maybe some are tracking loan requests with digitization efforts? What does the data reveal? Are loans are increasing or decreasing or becoming more specific with the availability of digital records? What is easy to track, what's not? Find out what community members worldwide are doing and share your experiences and expertise, tomorrow at iDigBio's Webinar: Variations on the theme of tracking loans, gifts, sampling, and more https://www.idigbio.org/content/webinar-variations-theme-tracking-loans-gif… *Guest presenters* include: Simon Checksfield and Nicole Fisher - CSIRO, Andrew Bentley - Specify, Christine Johnson - Entomology at AMNH, Tiffany Adrain - University of Iowa Paleontology, and Elspeth Haston - RBGE TIME: 21:00:00 (UTC) Friday 5:00 PM (EDT); Friday 4:00 PM (Kansas City); Friday 9:00 PM (Edinburgh, London); Sat 8:00 AM (Sydney) DATE: 30 October 2015 (1 November for Sydney, Australia) WHERE: http://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/datamgmt See you there! Deb, et al from the iDigBio Data Management Interest Group (DMIG) (please excuse cross-postings) -- -- Upcoming iDigBio Events https://www.idigbio.org/calendar -- Deborah Paul, iDigBio Technology Specialist Institute for Digital Information, 234 LSB Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-6366

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DCMI Free Webinar: Schema.org in Two Parts: From Use to Extension
by DCMI Announce 28 Oct '15

28 Oct '15

*********** Please excuse the cross postings *********** Schema.org in Two Parts: From Use to Extension *DCMI/ASIST Joint Webinar* =========================================================== *:: Presenter:* *Richard Wallis* *:: Times: *10:00am - 11:15am EST (UTC 15:00:00) *:: Dates:* Wednesday, Part 1 - 18 Nov. 2015 | Part 2 - 2 Dec. 2015 *:: Webinar Website:* http://dublincore.org/resources/training/#2015wallis *:: Part 1 Free Registration: *http://bit.ly/wallis-part1 *:: Part 2 Free Registration:* Coming soon (check Webinar Website above) =========================================================== *ABOUT THIS 2-PART WEBINAR SERIES:* When it was first introduced in 2011 Schema.org was seen by many as a grab, by Google and other search engines, for the semantic web landscape, or as something only of interest to the SEO community wanting their products displayed more prominently in search results. It was therefore somewhat of a surprise to the library community when, less than a year later, the global library cooperative OCLC introduced Schema.org structured data markup into the pages for the 300 million plus resources on Worldcat.org. Things have changed significantly since those early days. Schema.org structured data is now published on over 10 million web domains; the vocabulary has expanded to include over 600 Types and nearly 1,000 Properties; it’s core capability for describing bibliographic resources has been greatly extended. There is now a specific bibliographic extension -- bib.schema.org and, Schema.org implementations and discussions are becoming common in the library community. Join Independent consultant Richard Wallis, former Technology Evangelist for OCLC, currently working with Google on Schema.org, for this two part, in-depth mini-series look at Schema.org, its use, and extension in the bibliographic domain and beyond. *PART 1 WEBINAR: Fit For a Bibliographic Purpose* *Date/Time:* Wednesday, 18 November 2015 at 10:00am-11:15am EST (UTC 15:00:00 - *World Clock:* http://bit.ly/Webinar-1_Wallis) *Abstract:* In this first webinar in the series, Independent Consultant, Richard Wallis, traces the history of the Schema.org vocabulary, plus its applicability to the bibliographic domain. He will share the background to, and activities of, the Schema Bib Extend W3C Community Group he chairs; why it was set up; how it approached the creation of bibliographic extension proposals; and how those proposals were shaped. He will then review the current status of the vocabulary and the recent introduction of the bib.schema.org and auto.schema.org extensions. Although Richard will be using bibliographic examples, the content of this webinar will be of interest and relevance to those in other domains, and/or considering other extensions. *PART 2 WEBINAR: Extending Potential and Possibilities* *Date/Time:* Wednesday, 2 December 2015, 10:00am-11:15am EST (UTC 15:00:00 - *World Clock:* http://bit.ly/Webinar-2_Wallis) *Abstract:* In this second more technical webinar in the series, Independent Consultant, Richard Wallis, explains the Schema.org extension mechanism, for external and reviewed/hosted extensions, and their relationship to the core Schema.org vocabulary. He will take an in-depth look at, demonstrate, and share experiences in designing, and creating a potential extension to the vocabulary. He will step through the process of creating the required vocabulary definition and examples files on a local system using a few simple tools then sharing them on a publicly visible temporary cloud instance before proposing to the Schema.org group. *ABOUT THE PRESENTER:* Richard Wallis Independent Consultant, is a distinguished thought leader in Linked Data and Semantic Web who has been at the forefront of the emergence of these technologies for over 20 years. He is Chair of the Schema Bib Extend, and Schema Architypes, W3C Community Groups and evangelist for the adoption of Linked Data in cultural heritage and the wider Web. He has an international reputation for insightful and entertaining keynote sessions at library, Web, and Semantic Web focused events. Currently working with OCLC, Google, and the banking industry on the extension, application and use of the Schema.org vocabulary; he is a pragmatist who believes in searching for implementable solutions. --*Free Registration now for Part 1* at http://bit.ly/wallis-part1 --*Free Registration for Part 2* (announcement coming soon on Webinar Website)

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iDigBio Friday 23 October Webinar: Improving Data Quality: iDigBio Recordset data cleaning method, tools, and data flags
by Deborah Paul 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

Hi Everyone, Are you interested in Data Quality? Where and how, in the data pipeline from specimen and data collection, to digitization and annotation, can a collection's data quality be enhanced? Please join us for a webinar introduction to recordset data data cleaning at iDigBio. *Webinar:* Improving Data Quality: iDigBio Recordset data cleaning method, tools, and data flags https://www.idigbio.org/content/improving-data-quality-idigbio-recordset-da… *When: ***October 23rd, 2015, 2 PM EDT *Where: *http://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/datamgmt *Presenters: *Alex Thompson, Matt Collins with guests: Heather Appleby and Katja Seltmann *Pre-webinar reading:* Check out *blog post by Heather Appleby and Katja Seltmann* about their experience using the information in the data flags provided by iDigBio. What did they learn? What did we learn at iDigBio? What's next? https://www.idigbio.org/content/summer-learning-r-clean-data-idigbio-portal… Brought to you by the iDigBio DMIG and the iDigBio CYWG: https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/IDigBio_Working_Groups Please share! Best, Deb, et al at iDigBio (please excuse cross-postings) -- -- Upcoming iDigBio Events https://www.idigbio.org/calendar -- Deborah Paul, iDigBio Technology Specialist Institute for Digital Information, 234 LSB Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-6366

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iDigBio Friday 23 October Webinar: Improving Data Quality: iDigBio Recordset data cleaning method, tools, and data flags
by Deborah Paul 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

Hi Everyone, Are you interested in Data Quality? Where and how, in the data pipeline from specimen and data collection, to digitization and annotation, can a collection's data quality be enhanced? Please join us for a webinar introduction to recordset data data cleaning at iDigBio. *Webinar:* Improving Data Quality: iDigBio Recordset data cleaning method, tools, and data flags https://www.idigbio.org/content/improving-data-quality-idigbio-recordset-da… *When: ***October 23rd, 2015, 2 PM EDT *Where: *http://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/datamgmt *Presenters: *Alex Thompson, Matt Collins with guests: Heather Appleby and Katja Seltmann *Pre-webinar reading:* Check out *blog post by Heather Appleby and Katja Seltmann* about their experience using the information in the data flags provided by iDigBio. What did they learn? What did we learn at iDigBio? What's next? https://www.idigbio.org/content/summer-learning-r-clean-data-idigbio-portal… Brought to you by the iDigBio DMIG and the iDigBio CYWG: https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/IDigBio_Working_Group Please share! Best, Deb, et al at iDigBio (please excuse cross-postings) -- -- Upcoming iDigBio Events https://www.idigbio.org/calendar -- Deborah Paul, iDigBio Technology Specialist Institute for Digital Information, 234 LSB Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306 850-644-6366

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