Geneva meeting

CETAF ISTC Stable Identifier Initiative - Geneva Meeting

October 12, 2015, 9:00 - 17:00

Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève

Venue

Meeting rooms: La Console – 192 Rue de Lausanne, Geneva

Villa le Chêne (reception building) – in the centre of the Garden – access via the main entrance at Place Albert-Thomas (near the bus stop “Jardin botanique” and opposite the World Trade Organisation).

Getting here

Bus nos. 1 & 25 (via the main station), Bus no. 28 (from the airport) – stop “Jardin botanique.”

Participating CETAF member institutions

• Berlin - BGBM
• Paris
• Edinburgh
• KEW
• Berlin - MfN
• Vienna
• Stockholm
• Geneva
• ...

Expected outcome

Agree on clear implementation steps to be taken by participating partners until the spring 2016 CETAF general meeting and ISTC meeting.

Potential implementation steps:

• LOD catalogue functions.
• Ensuring that biodiversity portals such as GBIF link appropriately to specimen-URIs provided by CETAF institutions.
• Improving LOD capabilities by harmonizing RDF metadata and linking out to external information resources (e.g. persons, geographic features, scientific names).
• ...

Draft agenda

• Welcome / introduction /scope
• State of the play: each member summarises the state of identifier implementations in their institution (<= 5' per presentation)
• The Wallich Catalogue project: a potential target use case showing the potential of HTTP-URI identifiers for specimens (Roger Hyam).
• A tool to propagate identifiers into remote datasets (Nicky Nicolson)
• Discussion 1: can we identify and agree on targets / use cases which i) can be achieved within 6 months and ii) nicely demonstrate the potential of HTTP-URIs and LOD?
• Discussion 2: What's needed to achieve agreed target(s)?
• Discussion 3: Agree on roadmap and homework for each partner.
• Summary

Minutes

Participants

• Dominik Röpert (Berlin - BGBM)
• Anton Güntsch (Berlin - BGBM)
• Falko Glöckner (Berlin - MfN)
• Thomas Pfuhl (Berlin - MfN)
• Roger Hyam (Edinburgh)
• Ernst Vitek (Vienna)
• Simon Chagnoux (Paris)
• Thierry Bourgoin (Paris)
• Apologies: Nichy Nicholson (Kew)

Updates

• BGBM, MNHN, RBGE, and MfN gave an update on their existing implementations of HTTP-URI identifiers.
• All implementations provide working fully functional redirection mechanisms for both human-readable and machine-readable representations of physical collection objects.
• Each of the institutions publish the identifiers prominently on their respective collection data portals.
• The BGBM demonstrated that (if properly mapped via the BioCASE provider software) the identifiers are correctly displayed on the GBIF portal. In addition the BGBM implemented a RDF-sitemap function which provides a central access point for data aggregators.
• RBGE presented the "Wallich Catalogue Project" which builds an interactive website helping researchers understand the Wallich Catalogue* and interpret the herbarium specimens Nathaniel Wallich distributed on behalf of the British East India Company between 1829 and 1847 (http://wallich.rbge.info/). The system links to specimens held by distributed collection institutions via HTTP-URIs.
• It was agreed that
  • The Wallich Catalogue provides an excellent use case for demonstrating the usefullness of HTTP-URIs and Linked Open Data.
  • The CETAF ISTC identifier initiative should align their activities to improve the LoD-capabilities of the Wallich Catalogue and results should be presented at the General Meeting in Budapest (May 2016).
  • A minimal set of agreed (RDF) elements implemented consistently accross CETAF organisations would greatly help to facilitate preview functions in portals. The ISTC should make the specification of such a minimal set a priority.
  • The implementation of RDF-sitemap functions is not a priority because existing DwC-Archives can be used by aggregator systems for retrieving complete lists of HTTP-URIs published by institutions.