Enabling Cyberinfrastructure for Engaging Biodiversity Collections

堪萨斯大学获得了一笔赠款，用于改进指定软件。指定软件项目（http://specifysoftware.org）为112个生物研究收藏（博物馆和植物标本馆）提供软件和技术支持，以实现其收藏数据的数字捕获、管理和网络可访问性。该项目的任务是动员和部署300年来地球生物探索过程中收集、证明和记录的数据，用于教育、研究和科学和社会应用。该项目开发并支持指定，这是一个基于windows的、开源的、用于多个分类学学科的集合数据管理应用程序。指定为小型，中型和大型研究集合提供基线软件支持。没有许可费用，并为非营利机构提供免费的帮助台和数据管理支持，Specify是美国许多主要研究收藏唯一负担得起的，专业设计和支持的软件包。该奖项的目标是：(1)通过提供与我们当前的指定应用程序相关的持续帮助台和数据管理服务，加强对生物集合计算的支持；(2)到2007年底，将使用指定的集合数量增加到150-200个；(3)重新设计指定用户界面，作为可用性工程过程的一部分，使应用程序更易于学习和使用。(4)与欧洲和其他国际倡议合作，为集合数据定义更有用的标准和接口；(5)将Specify重新设计成一个通用的、三层的、面向对象的平台，用Java编写，并针对用户界面可扩展性、代码重用和社区开发协作进行了优化。指定软件架构的转变将定位并使指定集合能够完全参与新兴的网格计算环境。

The University of Kansas is awarded a grant to improve the Specify software. The Specify Software Project (http://specifysoftware.org) supports 112 biological research collections (museums and herbaria) with software and technical support for the digital capture, management and web accessibility of their collections data. The mission of the Project is to mobilize and deploy data gathered, vouchered and documented during 300 years of the biological exploration of the planet for education, research and application in science and society. The Project develops and supports Specify, a Windows-based, open source, collections data management application for multiple taxonomic disciplines. Specify provides baseline software support to small, medium and large research collections. Without a licensing fee and with free helpdesk and data management support for non-profits institutions, Specify is the only affordable, professionally engineered and supported package for many major U.S. research collections. The goals of this award are (1) to strengthen support of biocollections computing, by providing ongoing helpdesk and data management services related to our current Specify application, (2) to grow the number of collections that use Specify to 150-200 by the end of 2007, (3) to redesign the Specify user interface as part of a usability engineering process to make the application easier to learn and use, (4) to collaborate with European and other international initiatives to define more useful standards and interfaces for collections data, and (5) to re-engineer Specify into a versatile, three-tiered, object-oriented platform, written in Java, and optimized for user interface extensibility, code-reuse, and community development collaboration. The transformation in Specify's software architecture will position and enable Specify collections to participate fully in emerging grid computing environments.