Sustaining the Biodiversity Collections Infrastructure with the Specify Database Management System

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT DBI 9987445 Leopold University of Kansas Sustaining the Biodiversity Collections Infrastructure with the Specify Database management System Summary Worldwide, biological museums contain an estimated three billion specimens of animals and plants. This enormous information store, the result of 300+ years of biological exploration, documents the life of the planet. As natural communities diminish, specimen data documenting life's diversity have become increasingly valuable for research, education and resource management. However, these historical data are often inaccessible and poorly supported on locally-developed database systems. The SPECIFY Software Project is a community development effort to design, implement and support sophisticated scientific data management and analysis tools for biocollections. With NSF support, "SPECIFY," a robust, multi-taxon database application has been developed for the management of specimen information. In this award the project will be further developed to: (1) sustain the momentum of the Project by keeping SPECIFY current with commercial software components, (2) extend SPECIFY into client-server and internet retrieval architectures, and (3) continue with helpdesk and programming support for user institutions. SPECIFY 1.0 is available without cost at: http://www.usobi.org/specify with helpdesk support for collections institutions.