This page is about an taxonomic experts (meta)database

• Table of contents
• Experts Database
  • Overview
    • Conclusion
  • Specification
    • Data model
  • Implementation

Experts Database¶

Overview¶

The objective of this information service is to provide an efficient online information service on European Taxonomic experts, their expertise and ongoing and planned taxonomic research projects, building on existing services and content from previous efforts. The in-formation service is for internal as well as external use, but it will be designed (and con-tent collected) with high priority on meeting the needs for information by EDIT partners regarding:

• Provision of a better knowledge base for an integrated recruitment strategy in EDIT

• Taxonomic information backbone and Pan-European checklist activities of WP3

• Coordination of research organised by WP4 (especially regarding methodology)

• Formation of networks, committees and task-forces for WP6 and WP7 activities

• WP8s assessment of training resources for taxonomy in Europe

As agreed at the EDIT WP2 kick-off meeting in Paris, June 29 2006, the secretariat of the EDIT WP2 drafted an outline of:

• How to collect contents for the WP2 online information service on taxonomic experts, their expertise, and their ongoing and planned research

• An experts/expertise and project database structure, based on previous similar efforts

The draft has been reviewed by the WP2 partners, modified accordingly and formatted into this current draft which acts as the beginning of a specification of

• The form to enter or update data on experts

• The actual database structure behind the information service

• What the service (the product) should be able to do

• How we could achieve designing and implementing the service.

The product, a web-based information service on taxonomists, their fields of expertise and their interests / ongoing and planned research projects, should enable filtering and search facilities to find taxonomic experts based on any combination of criteria regarding:

• Their taxonomic expertise in 7 kinds of taxonomic activities (Enghoff &Seberg, 2006 and see below), within taxa - searchable by all levels down to family

• Geographic area(s) (countries, terrestrial areas, aquatic areas) their expertise relates to

• Environment of their taxonomic group (see elaboration below)

• Their ongoing taxonomic research

• National / International taxonomic research projects they are involved in

• Country they reside in

• Institution they work in

In order to find an existing system to fulfill the above roughly specified needs we started an intensive market screening and product survey on the internet. Hence we have initiated a collection of URLs for relevant existing services that contain data which could be in-cluded in the WP2 service – see http://www.connotea.org/user/icalabuig/tag/List%20taxonomic%20experts?num=100. This list should be heavily expanded, including the list of resources that keep catalogues of experts. Suggestions are most welcome!

Please note: The survey only included services which offer information related to taxon-omy / biodiversity, and did not include other e.g. commercial and / or off-the-shelf prod-ucts designed for other purposes (health sciences etc.).

Importantly, the German GTI-toolkits’ chapter Lists & databases on taxonomic experts will be explored further by the WP2 secretariat and hopefully, based on discussions with the German GTI focal point, selected content from this database may be included in the WP2 service.

In addition to relevant contents, the following services also have very relevant filter & query features and other functionality that have acted as inspiration for the WP2 service:

• ETI World Taxonomist Database: http://www.eti.uva.nl/tools/wtd.php, hosted and maintained by ETI – the Expert Center for Taxonomic Identification.

• DAISIE European Alien Species Expertise Registry http://daisie.ckff.si/

The portal contains special functionality, to our knowledge not covered by any of the other services, which we think would suit the needs of the WP2 information service – see elaboration below.

• “New Accession States” extension to Fauna Europaea, FaEu?-NAS http://zoology.fns.uniba.sk/faeu/search_service/search_index.htm

• Fauna Europaea experts database http://www.faunaeur.org/experts.php

Further services to explore for possible integration / linking / inspiration / migration of content etc. as per February 19, 2007, based on recent feed-back from EDIT WP2 partners:

• Walther Berendsohn: Recommends integrating with Index Herbariorum, http://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/IndexHerbariorum.asp

• Marian Ramos: Possible import of data from SYNTHESYS matrix on experts, and fur-ther development/re-use of tools developed under Fauna Iberica, see http://faunaiberica.org/ to be explored further

• Jackie Van Goethem: The very recently released Belgian information service BioBel? http://biobel.biodiversity.be/

Recently, it has been concluded that the Filemaker database on taxonomic expertise de-veloped by the German GTI focal Point matches the needs for the WP2 information service. Hence, a similar database application will be developed by EDIT WP5 for use in the EDIT network of institutions.

Conclusion¶

There might be several other splendid services out there, which the WP2 secretariat does not yet know about, but these are the main ones we have been able to find based on own search and a query among EDIT partner institutions. Based on the above market screening and information provided by product vendors and suppliers we must conclude that there are no current systems capable of fulfilling our main requirements. There may be systems or commercial products which might be able to fulfill our requirements by modification or adaptation of the system / product. We are not IT-literates though, and invite all kinds of comments and suggestions to solve this task of building an information service.

Specification¶

Data model¶

For every expert the following metadata should be stored:

Implementation¶

The database will be implemented as a module for the content management system Drupal by wp5.