Imago: An Open-Source Repository for Born-Digital Scientific Collections

Poster for Imago specimen digital library poster at the Educause Annual Conference 2017 to be held in Philadelphia, PA on Nov 1, 2017.

Transcript

1. Chad Hutchens, Head of Digital Collections, University of Wyoming Libraries Jennifer Laherty, Head of Sciences, Indiana University Libraries Robert H. McDonald (@mcdonald), Associate Dean for Research & Technology Strategies/Deputy Director D2I Center, Indiana University Imago: An Open-Source Repository for Born-Digital Scientific Collections BACKGROUND DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGIES Imago is a digital library/preservation solution to capture born-digital scientific specimen collections for your institutional repository. This open-source application powered by a Samvera/Fedora repository solution is the result of a collaboration between research libraries and biological collection curators across multiple institutions. This poster shows possibilities for bio- collections for IU and UW. IMAGO AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY IU Biological Specimen Collections • Herbarium – 130K pressed plant specimens • Paleontology – Currently 2,500+ fossils potential for 1.3M specimen lots/5M total fossils • Zooarchaeology – 10K 3D vertebrate skeletons • Can this architecture also be used for generalized datasets from other disciplines? IMAGO POSSIBILITIES AT UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING Dissemination & preservation of digitized fossil collections. IMLS grant to digitize 5,000 specimens from Wyoming’s rare fossil mammal collection. UW Biodiversity Collections SUMMARY REFERENCES • Neither content management systems, nor aggregation services provide preservation means for digital specimens. • Master images are not preserved in context with metadata • No agreed upon standards for file preservation, file format, technical metadata, etc. UW COLLECTIONS MANAGEMENT • IIF 3D Viewer integration for Imago specimens. • Advanced access controls for lab management and distribution. • Darwin Core Metadata. • Permanent table PIDs for long-term use. • Re-use of content via API access to collections with Symbiota and Specify. Highlights UW Geological Museum • Laherty, J. and Motz, G. (2016) Boundless Use of Indiana University's Biological Research Collections Possible in Partnership with IU Libraries. Paper presented at: IFLA WLIC. http://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/1958 • McDonald, R.H. and Hutchens, C. (2017). A New Ecosystem for Biodiversity Data: An Open Source Repository for Born Digital Scientific Collections. ACRL Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD. http://hdl.handle.net/2022/21781. • Stewart, C.A., Cockerill, T.M., Foster, I., Hancock, D., Merchant, N., Skidmore, E., Stanzione, D., Taylor, J., Tuecke, S., Turner, G., Vaughn, M., and Gaffney, N.I., Jetstream: a self-provisioned, scalable science and engineering cloud environment. 2015, In Proceedings of the 2015 XSEDE Conference: Scientific Advancements Enabled by Enhanced Cyberinfrastructure. St. Louis, Missouri. ACM: 2792774. p. 1-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2792745.2792774 • Imago is based on the Fedora/Samvera digital library and repository architecture (http://fedorarepository.org | https://samvera.org). • UW Museum of Vertebrates ~ 9.000 specimens • UW Geological Museum ~40,000 fossils • Rocky Mountain Herbarium ~850,000 specimens UW Collection Management Systems •Arctos (http://arctosdb.org) •Specify (http://specifyx.specifysoftware.org) •Symbiota (http://symbiota.org) • Documenting mass extinction and recovery of mammals during the K-PG extinction. • Using digital microscopy, focal stacking, and image tiling to generate 2D and 3D imagery. IU USE OF IMAGO Imago IU Herbarium Use Case • The current key use case for Indiana University is the IU Herbarium. • The herbarium uses Imago to make their specimens available for use with Symbiota and Specify and eventually as a part of the Consortium of Midwest Herbaria portal. • http://imago.indiana.edu •CMH Portal http://midwestherbaria.org/portal/index.php Digital Biodiversity Preservation Issues • Samvera/Fedora architecture achieves a generalized sustainable digital library repository solution for biological specimens. • This architecture can be maintained in scientific cloud architectures like Jetstream. #EDU17 #IMAGO