Missouri Botanical Garden Open Conference Systems, TDWG 2013 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Natural History collections as valuable sources of biodiversity data; solution by MUSEION
Jiri Frank, Pavel Mlcoch

Building: Grand Hotel Mediterraneo
Room: Sala dei Continenti
Date: 2013-10-29 05:10 PM – 05:15 PM
Last modified: 2013-10-08

Abstract


The sharing, publishing and usage/application of natural history/biodiversity data is an established trend, with several years of activity already in place. Together with digitization, its importance is currently highlighted by the biodiversity community, such as the European Commission in the Horizon 2020 program. Biodiversity data and research can be a useful resource in addressing some of the serious global questions that we currently face. Two of the main goals are to deliver predictive modelling of the biosphere, as was recently discussed during the Biodiversity Informatics Horizon 2013, and making effective use of such data.

A large amount of data has been already mobilized, but there are still specific sets of data that have particular significance. Datasets from natural history museum collections provide historical data important for calibration and comparison with recent data. Specimens from these collections contain information about the time and location where they were collected, in some cases, reaching more than one hundred years into the past.

This historical biodiversity information also has great local and national value for nature conservation agencies. The collections’ data are usually not easily available to agencies. Often, much depends on individual negotiation, or they are not accessible at all. There is no standard of collaboration for data sharing on this level, or at least not in the Czech Republic.

The National Museum would like to change this situation, and the best solution we have found is the MUSEION system, which is a very advanced collections management system, with a sophisticated level of scalability, modularity and application. It is able to build, unify, publish and connect collections database data with databases of various agencies, its own online portal, and specific portals using standard protocols. An additional feature, important for us, is its ability to interface with Customs, to help prevent illegal export of specimens.

Project MUSEION - eSbirky.cz is certified by Europeana as a national data repository for the Czech Republic.