From GBIF News & Events:

GBIF release the Integrated Publishing Toolkit 2.0

The GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) is a web based tool that enables scientists and technicians to publish and register their content through the GBIF network and has been released for early adoptors.

10.03.11
Through the uploading of text files or connection to an existing database, the IPT enables the publication of taxonomic checklists and primary biodiversity occurrence data in a standard format (the Darwin Core standard). Additionally, the IPT allows scientists to describe the nature of datasets by authoring dataset metadata in accord with the GBIF Metadata Profile (based on the Ecological Metadata Language). Institutions may share single installations of an IPT to enable "hosting" services for other institutions; the IPT respects institutional ownership allowing the content to be attributed accordingly to the custodians. The IPT data formats are flexible, and thematic groups can define and register extensions and vocabularies to help standardise content being published that will be available to all IPT users. With the IPT, data holders can share more content types than previously possible, while supplying the necessary metadata to help scientists using the content shared through GBIF better determine if the dataset is of use to them.

Following the release, GBIF are focusing on supporting deployments and expect to announce IPT training workshops for later in 2011.

This new version of the IPT will be officially launched in October 2011 at the 18th GBIF Governing Board Meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The GBIF Secretariat will work closely with the Nodes Strategy Group and key IPT users to ensure that a comprehensive uptake plan is ready for the IPT v2.0 launch. This plan will include a technology transition guide, a training programme, final user manuals and technical documentation, an expert network and a distributed helpdesk.

More information on the IPT can be found in http://www.gbif.org/informatics/infrastructure/publishing/ and http://www.gbif.org/index.php?id=751.

Message from Tim Robertson, GBIF Secretariat:
Dear Node Managers and Data Publishers,
The objective of this communication is to update you on the current situation of the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT).  The IPT is a tool providing publishing capabilities for primary biodiversity occurrence data, taxonomic checklists and the associated metadata for these resource types.
Since its first introduction in March 2009, the IPT has been used with some success by a limited number of users to publish primary biodiversity data into the GBIF network, along with descriptive metadata at the dataset level.
The GBIF Secretariat (GBIFS) has solicited and received a vast amount of feedback during the first year of the IPT use, and would like to thank all those who provided this.  The feedback received overwhelmingly confirms that the concept of the IPT is sound. However, feedback has also made it clear that it is over-specified for the majority of user needs, is not yet sufficiently robust, is too slow in operation, and (due to the excessive functionality) has high server requirements creating a barrier for many to adopt and use it.  In addition, the feedback has made it clear that our communications surrounding the status of the IPT releases have been too infrequent and unclear concerning which release candidate we were offering and what functionalities this release candidate would include or not include, as per user needs/expectations.
Based upon the extensive feedback GBIFS has revised our planned development roadmap for the IPT and are currently performing a major refactoring effort to:
•    Reduce the server requirements significantly
•    Increase the data import performance by removing the embedded database
•    Remove the dependency on heavy libraries and tools such as Geoserver
•    Remove all data interfaces that are not necessary for data publication through GBIF
•    Improve the robustness of the tool
When complete, the refactored IPT will offer through an intuitive interface:
•    Authoring of metadata according to the GBIF metadata profile
•    Import and mapping of checklist and occurrence data either from file upload or by connection of a database
•    Registration to and publication onto the GBIF network
•    Importing and mapping of data to the DarwinCore, and DarwinCore extensions
•    Output formats of EML (2.1.0) metadata and DarwinCore Archive
•    Improved customisation options for the “About this IPT”
•    Improved GBIF Registry integration
•    Improved DarwinCore extension and vocabulary organization
•    Improved management of the organisations to which the IPT and resources are related, to enable co-hosting capabilities
•    Enhanced dataset metadata authoring
Whilst this is a reduction in existing functionality this has been deemed necessary to ensure the IPT is meeting the core requirements as expressed by the user community.  The following features will be removed and only reintroduced if necessary through consultation with the IPT community:
•    TAPIR interface
•    TCS output format
•    Search and browse web interface   
•    OGC web services
All IPT development efforts are now focused on this revised roadmap, and it is anticipated that early testing of the new codebase will commence in October 2010 with the involvement of willing Nodes.  The release of a fully stable IPT is targeted for the end of 2010. However, this will only occur if the testing community is satisfied that the product is ‘release-ready’ together with the required user manual and technical documentation.  Should that not be the case, as it may take more time to implement and test the improvements outlined above, you will be informed as soon as possible.
Further developments of the IPT beyond this release will only be implemented after a further scoping with the GBIF community.  An area for further IPT discussion will be set up on the GBIF community website (http://community.gbif.org)
If you have any questions or would like to know more about the GBIF IPT and/or revised process, feel free to contact:
Tim Robertson
GBIF Information Systems Architect
trobertson@gbif.org
With best regards,
Tim Robertson
GBIF Secretariat

July 2010

USVH Workshop - Building the USVH

The 2010 USVH Annual Meeting will be held on August 1 in conjunction with the Botanical Society of America 2010 Annual Meeting in Providence, RI. Participants will hear reports from Steering Committee and Task Force members regarding the current status of the project within the various regions plus steps being taken to further its development. The focus will be on what is required to accelerate herbarium specimen digitization efforts around the United States. See Botany 2010 Workshop Descriptions for more information.

For the first time, the international Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) and the Canadian Botanical Association (CBA/ABC) are holding a joint annual conference, hosted by the Canadian Museum of Nature. Fully synchronized programs will allow participants from both organizations to attend any of the concurrent sessions and participate in many joint conference activities.

With 2010 declared “The International Year of Biodiversity” by the United Nations, this gathering of natural history collection professionals and botany specialists will offer many exciting opportunities for “cross-fertilization” of ideas and transfer of knowledge between participants.

Our website is now live at http://www.spnhc-cba2010.org/

We invite you to visit the site and register for the conference.

Come and join us!