Abstract
Natural history collections are invaluable tools for various questions regarding biodiversity, environmental, and cultural studies. All object metadata thus need to be findable, reachable and interoperable for the scientific community and beyond. This requires a good structuration of data, appropriate exchange formats, and web sites or portals making all necessary information accessible. Collection managers, curators, and scientist from various institutions and nationalities were surveyed in order to understand the importance of open geoscientific collections for the respective holding institution and their daily work. In addition, particular requirements for the publication of geoscientific collection object metadata were gathered in a two-day workshop with international experts working with paleontological, mineralogical, petrological and meteorite collections. The survey and workshop revealed that common data standards are of crucial importance though insufficiently used by most institutions. The extent and type of information necessary for the publication and discussed during the workshop will be considered for domain specific application schema facilitating the publication and exchange of geoscientific object metadata. There is a high demand for comprehensive data portals covering all geoscientific disciplines. Gathered portal requirements will be taken into account when improving the already running GeoCASe aggregator platform.
Highlights
Our natural history heritage is distributed worldwide
Whereas curators and collection managers are seeking for an appropriate infrastructure for collection object related information, researchers mostly use databases with collection object related information derived from already published literature for their daily work
There are different approaches to realize this added value, for example by a reference connected to the specimen or searchable references through a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) associated to collection objects in data portals like Geoscientific Collection Access Service (GeoCASe)
Summary
Our natural history heritage is distributed worldwide. The collection objects are stored at various organizations and information about the specimens come, in most cases, from independently developed databases. The data standard Access to Biological Collection Data (ABCD, Berendsohn 2007) is a well-known and widely accepted exchange format primarily used for natural history collection and observation data. In order to specify data related to geoscientific objects, an ABCD extension was developed covering petrology, mineralogy, and paleontology. The standard ABCD and its extension EFG has already been actively used and has been accepted for data publication in miscellaneous portals (summary in Petersen et al 2018). E.g., the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, https:// www.gbif.org) provides the most comprehensive and prominent search portal for species occurrences including collection object and observation data. In order to overcome this, the Geoscientific Collection Access Service (GeoCASe, http://www.geocase.eu) a domain specific portal aggregating data using the ABCDEFG standard, was developed. In order to increase the acceptance of the portal and provide a sustainable service, it is necessary to focus future efforts primarily on demands arising from the scientific community itself
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
