Scientific Software Innovation Institute (S212) Workshop for Biological Collections

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this national, interdisciplinary S2I2 workshop is to resolve and document the type of software architecture, platforms, and services needed to transform U.S. biological collection institutions into a highly network-integrated, virtual community of biodiversity data providers. The workshop will bring together professionals from the fields of research collection curation, software engineering, operations research, and production logistics. It will discuss the expectations of biological research collections community for national coordination of software innovation. It will also enumerate the properties and services such a center would need to incentivize and engage the community, including technical services, data entry workflows, software platforms and applications for efficient, scalable, computerization of un-digitized specimen collections. With its interdisciplinary expertise, the workshop will explore software options for moving from local-scale data capture and curation methodologies to innovative, national-scale tools for high-throughput computerization and annotation of biological specimen information. The workshop?s findings will be synthesized into an electronic report on the meeting web site. It will inform NSF, scientists, and informatics researchers of the software and software support needed to create a national software architecture, platforms, and services, which would transform hundreds of U.S. zoological museums and herbaria into a vibrant virtual community of interacting biodiversity data providers.