UCB IMLS Workshop Agenda

Friday, February 17, 2012

University and Jepson Herbaria Conference Room

1002 Valley Life Science Building (VLSB)

Invitees

Logistics

Background

You are cordially invited to meet with us to discuss specimen management systems for herbaria, botanical gardens, and other natural history collections.

With the support of a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the University of California, Berkeley and its partners at the Museum of the Moving Image and the Walker Art Center are changing the way museums and other collecting organizations work together on software development, use, and governance. By bringing together institutions grappling with similar issues, we hope to develop a model for sharing knowledge, resources, and experiences in order to create solutions to our common problems.

The UC Berkeley workshop will demonstrate work done to migrate the specimen collection of the University and Jepson Herbaria into CollectionSpace, including the development of workflows for image-based cataloging of specimen sheets.  Community input on new work related to living and preserved collections, rapid data capture, data sharing, mapping, and georeferencing will be sought in order to provide the kinds of services needed in natural history collections.  Finally, the meeting will develop this idea of a community-supported version of CollectionSpace that can be sustained as both the field and technology move forward.

Agenda (draft)

  • Continental breakfast (9:00-9:30)
  • Introductions, background, and goals (9:30-10:00, Brent Mishler)
  • Demo: Seaweed digitization (10:00-10:45, Andrew Doran)
    • Group activity: Specimen digitization workflows - what works, what doesn't
  • Break (10:45-11:00)
  • Demo: Migrated UCJEPS data (from SMASCH) (11:00-11:45, Chris Hoffman)
    • Group activity: Review screenshots for completeness, identify missing fields, confusing names
  • Lunch (11:45-1:00, Grinnell-Miller Library, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 3101 VLSB)
    • Optional: Botany Lunch presentation by Kathy Ann Miller, "Images, Databases and the Seaweed Flora of California")
  • Demo and design review: Customizations for botanical gardens (1:00-1:45, Chris Hoffman, Amy Wieliczka)
    • Botanical propagation module designs
    • Group activity: Review screenshots for completeness, identify missing fields, confusing names
  • Demo and design review: Invoking mapping services (Berkeley Mapper) (1:45-2:30, John Deck, Amy Wieliczka)
    • Group activity: Review screenshots for completeness, identify missing fields, confusing names
  • Break (2:30-2:45)
  • Design review: Data sharing and interoperability (DarwinCore and Symbiota) (2:45-3:30, Ed Gilbert, Lam Voong)
    • Group activity: Best practices and policies for data sharing
  • Design review: Archives and field notebooks (3:30-4:00, Andrew Doran)
  • Break (4:00-4:15)
  • Sustainability (4:15-4:45, Brent Mishler, David Greenbaum)
    • Domain-based communities of practice: Towards a sustainable shared version of CollectionSpace
    • Hosting, CollectionSpace-as-a-Service in the cloud.
  • Conclusions and next steps (4:45-5:00)