Innovative, Internet-Based Protocols for the Rapid Acquisition of Biodiversity Collection Data

这项探索性研究的小额赠款提议为与植物生物多样性凭证收集相关的信息制定创新的数据采集协议。 所提出的工作的概念创新是分离的过程中的标本数据采集的过程中的数据输入。 数据的采集将通过对植物标本进行原位成像来完成。这些图像随后将通过互联网传送给远程数据输入承包商，在那里图像中的科学数据将被转换为结构化数据记录，然后通过互联网返回到收藏。 该数据采集协议开发项目具有重要意义，原因有二：1）仅在美国，研究收藏中就估计有6000多万种植物标本。 每个标本都包括世界植物群的历史分布数据，并且在自动化系统中仅捕获了美国收藏品中估计2%的标本的数据。 这些储存在博物馆橱柜中的信息是地球上300年生物多样性清单的结果，代表了美国生物基础设施的巨大人力和财力投资。2)该项目正在严格审查数据输入规程的科学和管理部分，主要目标是尽量减少费用。 将6000万植物标本标签上的数据转化为货币的最大障碍是挑战的规模。 该项目将审查几种工作协议的变化，试图找到有效的和经济上可扩展的技术，可以在整个收藏界普遍实施，以快速开发生物多样性研究机构馆藏的计算机化索引。 这项工作的结果将可能通过制定从生物收集中快速输入数据的工具、协议和标准，对国家生物基础设施作出重大贡献。

This Small Grant for Exploratory Research proposes to develop innovative data acquisition protocols for information associated plant biodiversity voucher collections. The conceptual innovation of the proposed work is the separation of the process of specimen data acquisition from the processes of keystroke data entry. Acquisition of data will be accomplished by imaging plant specimens, in situ, within the collection galleries. The images will then be communicated over the Internet to a remote data entry contractor where the scientific data within the image will be converted to structured data records and then returned via the Internet to the collection. This data acquisition protocol development project is significant for two reasons: 1) There are an estimated 60+ million plant specimens in research collections in the U.S. alone. Each specimen includes historical distribution data on the world's flora and data from only an estimated 2% of the specimens in U.S. collections have been captured in automated systems. This information stored in museum cabinets is the result of 300 years of biodiversity inventories on the planet and represents a monumental human and financial investment in the US biological infrastructure. 2) The project is critically examining the scientific and management components of data entry protocols, with the primary objective of minimizing cost. The largest impediment to bringing the data archived on the labels of 60 million plant specimens into currency is the scale of the challenge. This project will examine several work protocol variations to attempt to find efficient and economically scalable techniques that could be implemented generically across the collections community for the rapid development of computerized indexes of the holdings of biodiversity research institutions. The results of this work will likely contribute significantly to the National Biological Infrastructure (NBII) by producing tools, protocols and standards for rapid data entry from biological collections.