Missouri Botanical Garden Open Conference Systems, TDWG 2013 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Online Annotation of Biodiversity Data – the AnnoSys Approach
Okka Tschoepe, Lutz Suhrbier, Anton Güntsch, Walter G. Berendsohn

Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: America del Nord (Theatre I)
Date: 2013-11-01 09:45 AM – 10:00 AM
Last modified: 2013-10-08

Abstract


Annotations are an important quality control mechanism in biodiversity research. The increasing accessibility of specimen data via the Internet calls for a general online annotation system that ensures the continuance of traditional data sharing and documentation of specimen data after their mobilisation through digitisation.

Using the example of collection and observation data in the botanical domain as provided by the GBIF/BioCASE networks, the AnnoSys project (https://annosys.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/) addressed this demand by developing a system enabling users to manage digital annotations on structured online data records. This included the definition of a set of concepts, common workflows and a generic context and data model.

The annotation context model builds upon the traditional triple identifier (GUID) to link together specimen data units, the structured original data record (XML) that the annotation refers to and a selection of data element selectors (XPath) within the original data record. The latter, in combination with pairs of annotated values and/or text comments captures the actual user annotation. Furthermore, the underlying data model specifies annotation metadata, such as information about the annotated record, the annotating agent(s), the motivation for the creation as well as the date and GUID of the annotation.

The AnnoSys software implementation provides a user-friendly interface that allows researchers to produce and search for annotations. If a record has been annotated, annotation and original record are stored together in an annotation data repository and will be accessible through the AnnoSys user interface. A message service informs curators and scientists specifically interested in a subset of data about new annotations.

Changed or augmented records can be made available to aggregators such as GBIF by means of a BioCASE provider.

On the basis of the W3C Open Annotation Data Model, web services like SPARQL or Linked Open Data provide third party applications for the access or exchange of annotation context data.

Details and functions of the AnnoSys software will be shown in the proposed computer demo “Hands-On AnnoSys – Managing Annotations Online”.