Last modified: 2011-09-10
Abstract
The Biodiversity Information and Cybertaxonomy Services at the Royal Museum for Central Africa are working on a variety of subjects and projects to support taxonomy and biodiversity research in-house, as well in national and international consortiums. We identified the need for a tool that would manage the communication, dissemination, and helpdesk activities with the many partners and stakeholders involved.
As a base, we decided to use the Drupal 6 content management system which has one of the largest online communities of developers and contributors. We adapted the system to our needs by using a multi-domain installation, which consists of one overarching structure which we call Cybertaxonomy Portal with several sub-domains for different projects we’re involved in (examples include SYNTHESYS-NA2 (Synthesis of Systematic Resources – Network Activity 2), BHL-Europe (Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe), OpenUp! (Opening Up Natural History Collections to Europeana), or CABIN (Central African Biodiversity Information Network)).
The portal and each of the sub-domains can be used and configured independently, or linked to each other, which makes cross-domain administration and management of content fairly easy, as content relevant to various project only needs to be updated once. Nevertheless, the installation also allows for every sub-domain to be presented in a different design and with a different set of functionalities, depending on the stakeholder requirements.
The tool uses different modules for a variety of functionalities like forums, calendar and events, webforms, personal profiles, subscription and notification, or private messaging. The file sharing system supports text, image, audio, and video files by default, however the added value is that any of the content generated on a specific sub-domain can be posted any other domain as well. Every user can subscribe to notifications on changes of one or more sub-domains, for which he can use the same login and password.
Finally there is a possibility to create specific subgroups for various purposes that have forums or files that are only accessible to members of those groups.
Although still in development, this tool has proven to be very useful as a helpdesk for several projects, as well as for internal and external communication. There are collaborations between the various sub-domains, while others act as deliverables for projects such as SYNTHESYS and EDIT (European Distributed Institution of Taxonomy). We set up a cooperation with the BioCASE (Biological Collection Access Service for Europe) Helpdesk and plan on sharing the network of experts and compatible communication systems with the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) Helpdesk, to avoid duplication of efforts and optimize the collaboration.
In the demonstration we will show the functionality, like how useful it is for updating information that is relevant to different projects without having to update it on every page separately. We will elaborate more on the workflow/management aspect or the technical aspect, depending on what details the conference attendees are interested in. We also hope to give new ideas to colleagues who deal with biodiversity information sciences management and the Drupal community, and welcome suggestions for improvement.