SilverCollection: Web Portal for Biological Collections

SilverCollection is an interactive web portal for public viewing of biological collections. In contrast with other general web portal creations where a form is submitted for searching a collection or possibly hyperlinks are followed to browse taxa, this software combines the TDWG standards for data interoperability with real-time designs. These designs remove the traditional forms and hyperlinks and replace them with interactive links and real-time results commonly found in desktop applications. The main objective of this software is to provide web access to similar functions found in collection management software, such as browsing, searching, and the creation of distribution maps and checklists from collection data. Additional features include the ability to download and send by email any set of data.

Independent of the collection data are images tagged with searchable morphological character metadata. These images would be provided by the institution housing the collection. Once metadata are bound to the image, these fields can be used by any web user to identify taxa, similar to using an interactive key.

SilverCollection does not replace collection management software, instead, it serves its own Darwin Core v1.4 compliant data from a MySQL database. A harvester is used to synchronize the authoritative database to the SilverCollection's database.

The goal of this software is to form a network of collections that use the same common web portal interface with common tools that work easily with all the biological collections.

The software is setup to work with a TapirLink provider, TapirLink's LSID resolver, and other third party tools. Some example tools are google maps, biogeomancer, ICUN red list of threatened species, and IWMI on-line climate summary service.

Further information about this project and its progress, updated periodically, is at http://collection.silverbiology.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• SilverBiology
• SilverCollection
• Biodiversity
• Informatics
• Virtual
• herbarium
• tapirlink
• tapir
• tdwg
• DarwinCore
• Interactive
• Keys
• Gbif