ABI Sustaining: Supporting Biological Collections Computing with Specify

250多年来，成千上万的专业、学生和公民生物学家通过广泛而细致的探索，努力发现、观察和记录地球野生物种的多样性。美国各地的数百家生物博物馆拥有无数生物调查和库存的研究产品，即数百万种动物和植物标本。这些独特的凭证记录了地球上物种的身份和分布，并记录了生物多样性的地理格局。基于生物收集的研究不仅产生了关于物种及其分布的科学知识，而且还将标本数据用于预测气候变化的生物影响的计算模型。标本数据还用于通知国家和区域保护优先事项，以及环境教育和专业培训。Specify项目的主要目标是提供软件，将与博物馆标本有关的所有分类学、地理和生态学信息传送到基于互联网的信息门户，供公众查阅、制定政策和进行研究。Specify被284个美国研究收藏所用于收集、管理和发布标本持有数据。该软件平台还有助于跟踪博物馆标本交易和法律的合规性，以获取和管理来自地球的新藏品？剩下的荒野之地。Specify使生物研究人员的投资现代化并扩大其影响，利用生物调查和库存方面真正巨大的三个世纪的投资。Specify Project软件通过促进以前隐藏在博物馆橱柜中的数据的发布来实现这一目标，并通过软件支持来计算信息，并将其带到免费访问，开放访问的网络信息门户网站。在此过程中，Specify软件项目将推导并实施一个商业模式，以在财务上支持其核心软件工程和技术支持活动。通过社区共识收集活动，我们将从全国各地的大学管理人员、博物馆和生物收藏机构的研究主任那里获得建议，以确定一种收入模式来维持指定软件项目的技术支持活动。我们将采访目前使用Specify的美国研究机构的代表，以评估他们参与各种基于收费和联盟成员资格的选项的可能性，以获得持续的Specify支持和软件更新。在与商业顾问协商后，我们将综合这些社群活动的结果，并为Specify项目的财务支持提出一个收入结构。我们将承担Specify 7数据管理平台软件的“持续开发”（维护和完成）。Specify项目将继续提供技术服务台支持服务，包括为美国研究收集机构提供推广和培训，使用和采用Specify进行生物标本数据处理。 Specify Software Project网站位于：http://specifysoftware.org。

For more than 250 years, thousands of professional, student and citizen biologists have strived through wide-ranging but detailed exploration to discover, observe and document the diversity of earth's wild species. Hundreds of biological museums across the U.S. hold the research products from innumerable biotic surveys and inventories, namely millions of curated specimens of animals and plants. Those unique vouchers document the identity and distribution of species across the planet, as well as document geographical patterns of biological diversity. Research based on biological collections not only generates scientific knowledge of species and their distributions, it also employs specimen data in computational models for predicting the biological impacts of climate change. Specimen data are also used for informing national and regional conservation priorities, and in environmental education and professional training. The primary goal of the Specify Project is to provide software to mobilize all of the taxonomic, geographic and ecological information associated with museum specimens to internet-based information portals for public access, policy and research. Specify is used by 284 U.S. research collections to digitize, manage and publish specimen holdings data. The software platform also facilitates the tracking of museum specimen transactions and legal compliance for the acquisition and curation of new collections from earth?s remaining wild places. Specify modernizes and extends the impact of the investment made by biological researchers, leveraging the truly monumental, three-century investment in biological survey and inventory. Specify Project software accomplishes this by facilitating the publication of data previously sequestered in museum cabinets with software support to computerize the information and to bring it to freely-accessible, open access, web information portals. During the course of this effort, the Specify Software Project will derive and implement a business model to financially support its core software engineering and technical support activities. Through community consensus-gathering activities, we will obtain advice from university administrators, museum and research directors from biological collections institutions around the country in order to identify a revenue model to sustain the technical support activities of the Specify Software Project. We will interview representatives of U.S. research institutions currently using Specify to assess the likelihood of their participation in various fee-based and consortium membership-based options for ongoing Specify support and software updates. In consultation with business advisors we will synthesize the findings of those community activities and propose a revenue structure for financial support of the Specify Project. We will undertake 'sustaining development' (maintenance and completion) of software for the Specify 7 data management platform. The Specify Project will continue to provide technical help desk support services, including outreach and training for U.S. research collections institutions using and adopting Specify for biological specimen data processing. The Specify Software Project web site is located at: http://specifysoftware.org.