A botanical demonstration of the potential of linking data using unique identifiers for people.

Anton Güntsch,Heimo Rainer,David Fichtmüller,Mathias Dillen,Quentin Groom,David Peter Shorthouse,Jörg Holetschek,Marcus Ernst,Elspeth Haston,Dominik Röpert,Maarten Trekels,Roger Hyam,Andreas Plank,Manuel Corpas

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0261130

Abstract

Natural history collection data available digitally on the web have so far only made limited use of the potential of semantic links among themselves and with cross-disciplinary resources. In a pilot study, botanical collections of the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) have therefore begun to semantically annotate their collection data, starting with data on people, and to link them via a central index system. As a result, it is now possible to query data on collectors across different collections and automatically link them to a variety of external resources. The system is being continuously developed and is already in production use in an international collection portal.

Highlights

It is estimated that almost 400 million preserved plant specimens are stored in 3,324 herbaria worldwide and are available for a wide range of research activities [1]
For specimens to be included into the Specimen Catalogue, institutions need to share their collections with Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), using a Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) Identifier for their records
Specimen data published semantically and annotated via RDF interfaces of the participating collections are transferred to a central index database via a harvesting process. This was connected to the pilot via a standardized SPARQL [21] query interface. By this method it was possible for the first time to investigate precisely how many specimens in different collections were collected by the same persons (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

It is estimated that almost 400 million preserved plant specimens are stored in 3,324 herbaria worldwide and are available for a wide range of research activities [1]. Almost all of these specimens are mounted alongside a label on which various information is noted. To improve access to specimens, multiple specimens are gathered in the same collection event, these are so called duplicates. These duplicates are distributed and stored in different herbaria and share their original label data

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion