Enriched biodiversity data as a resource and service

Background: Recent years have seen a surge in projects that produce large volumes of structured, machine-readable biodiversity data. To make these data amenable to processing by generic, open source “data enrichment” workflows, they are increasingly being represented in a variety of standards-compliant interchange formats. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and taxonomists came together to address the challenges and highlight the opportunities in the enrichment of such biodiversity data by engaging in intensive, collaborative software development: The Biodiversity Data Enrichment Hackathon. Results: The hackathon brought together 37 participants (including developers and taxonomists, i.e. scientific professionals that gather, identify, name and classify species) from 10 countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the UK, and the US. The participants brought expertise in processing structured data, text mining, development of ontologies, digital identification keys, geographic information systems, niche modeling, natural language processing, provenance annotation, semantic integration, taxonomic name resolution, web service interfaces, workflow tools and visualisation. Most use cases and exemplar data were provided by taxonomists. One goal of the meeting was to facilitate re-use and enhancement of biodiversity knowledge by a broad range of stakeholders, such as taxonomists, systematists, ecologists, niche modelers, informaticians and ontologists. The suggested use cases resulted in nine breakout groups addressing three main themes: i) mobilising heritage biodiversity knowledge; ii) formalising and linking concepts; and iii) addressing interoperability between service platforms. Another goal was to further foster a community of experts in biodiversity informatics and to build human links between research projects and institutions, in response to recent calls to further such integration in this research domain. Conclusions: Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use case, areas of inadequacy were discussed and are being pursued further. It was striking how many possible applications for biodiversity data there were and how quickly solutions could be put together when the normal constraints to collaboration were broken down for a week. Conversely, mobilising biodiversity knowledge from their silos in heritage literature and natural history collections will continue to require formalisation of the concepts (and the links between them) that define the research domain, as well as increased interoperability between the software platforms that operate on these concepts

Infrastructures for digital research: new opportunities and challenges

No abstract available

What’s Next for Digital Outreach and Archives: A Swedish Perspective

Many archives today are not fully utilizing available technologies to best display collection materials online. In the days of “Archives 2.0,” we have the tools to assist users by providing greater access, context, and engagement with our collections, yet many archives are falling short of incorporating these tools. In the summer of 2014, I traveled to Sweden to see what Swedish libraries, archives, and museums were doing to facilitate online engagement with their collection materials. I found that while many organizations are following the old build-it-and-they-will-come model of digital projects, some are moving beyond this. These organizations are providing users with tools to provide feedback on digital projects and have a voice in what items are digitized. I also spoke with forward-thinking innovators about this idea of “what’s next” for digital outreach and archives. These individuals had ideas for moving beyond simply providing access to collections to providing methods for insight and interpretation. This is a call to action that we, as archivists, need to take more risks, ask users what they want to see, and think creatively about providing new platforms for facilitating engagement with our resources

Building capacity in climate change policy analysis and negotiation: methods and technologies

Capacity building is often cited as the reason “we cannot just pour money into developing countries” and why so many development projects fail because their design does not address local conditions. It is therefore a key technical and political concept in international development. Some of the poorest countries in the world are also some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Their vulnerability is in part due to a lack of capacity to plan and anticipate the effects of climate change on crops, water resources, urban electricity demand etc. What capacities do these countries lack to deal with climate change? How will they cope? What steps can they take to reduce their vulnerability? This innovative and high-profile research project was part of a larger project (called C3D) and conducted with non-governmental organisations in Senegal, South Africa and Sri Lanka. The research involved several participatory workshops and a questionnaire to all three research centres

Tourism and the smartphone app: capabilities, emerging practice and scope in the travel domain.

Based on its advanced computing capabilities and ubiquity, the smartphone has rapidly been adopted as a tourism travel tool.With a growing number of users and a wide varietyof applications emerging, the smartphone is fundamentally altering our current use and understanding of the transport network and tourism travel. Based on a review of smartphone apps, this article evaluates the current functionalities used in the domestic tourism travel domain and highlights where the next major developments lie. Then, at a more conceptual level, the article analyses how the smartphone mediates tourism travel and the role it might play in more collaborative and dynamic travel decisions to facilitate sustainable travel. Some emerging research challenges are discussed

Personal security in travel by public transport : the role of traveller information and associated technologies

Acknowledgement This research reported in this paper has been funded by a grant award from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council: EP/I037032/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Developing Web Archiving Metadata Best Practices to Meet User Needs

The OCLC Research Library Partnership Web Archiving Metadata Working Group was established to meet a widely recognized need for best practices for descriptive metadata for archived websites. The Working Group recognizes that development of successful best practices intended to ensure discoverability requires an understanding of user needs and behavior. We have therefore conducted an extensive literature review to build our knowledge and will issue a white paper summarizing what we have learned. We are also studying existing and emerging approaches to descriptive metadata in this realm and will publish a second report recommending best practices. We will seek broad community input prior to publication