Difference between revisions of "Projects"

Revision as of 13:49, 28 March 2015

A listing of all digitisation projects with current status and summary and a link to the project webpage if it exists
Individual pages for projects that are active and want to use this wiki

Synthesys3 This is an EU project running from September 2013 to September 2017 with a significant digitisation element within the Joint Research Activity which has an associated wiki and the Network Activity 3 which also has an associated wiki.

StanDAP-Herb (Standard Data Acquisition Process)
General Information about the Project

• Title: A standardised and optimised process for data acquisition from digital images of herbarium specimens
  
• Funded by: DFG German Research Foundation, Literaturversorgung und Information / Erschließung und Digitalisierung, Call: Standardbildung zur Erschließung und / oder Digitalisierung von Objektgattungen in wissenschaftlichen Sammlungen
  
• Duration: 3 Years (from July 2014)
  
• Project Partners:

• Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Freie Universität Berlin
• Hochschule Hannover, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Fakultät I Elektro – und Informationstechnik
• Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation, IOSB, Karlsruhe

• Aim: The project will develop and document a software-driven standard process for extracting metadata from images of herbarium specimens
• Abstract

On herbarium sheets, data like plant name, collection site, collector, barcode, accession number, etc. are found mostly on labels glued on the sheet. The data is thus visible on images taken of the specimen. Currently, they are mostly entered manually into collection databases. The StanDAP-Herb Project funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation) develops a standard process for (semi-) automatic detection of meta-data on Herbarium specimens to replace the time consuming manual data input as much as possible. Image processing software detects objects such as labels or barcodes on the digitized record and classifies them. Text objects are transformed into structured information using text mining algorithms. For handwriting, author identification is attempted. The project evaluates and enhances existing software to comply with standard interfaces and integrate them into an open software architecture based on established IT standards. The software modules thus become available for work flow processing, in order to verify data quality, facilitate data discovery and enhance the application of collection data in research.

The project addresses a large proportion of scientific collections: approximately 22 million herbarium specimens exist as botanical reference objects in Germany, about 500 million worldwide.

The Research Data Alliance The Research Data Alliance (RDA) builds the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing of data. The RDA vision is researchers and innovators openly sharing data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society. Some of the relevant Working Groups and Interest Groups are listed here:

• Publishing Data Workflows Working Group
• Biodiversity Data Integration Interest Group
• Education and Training on Handling of Research Data
• Metadata Interest Group
• Research Data Provenance

Global Plants Initiative
General Information about the Project

• Title:
  
• Funded by: Andrew W Mellon Foundation
  
• Duration: 2004 to 2015
  
• Project Partners:

• 270 partners in over 70 countries
• The European partners were:

• Aim: To digitise all type specimens as well as other specimens considered to be important and make them available to researchers around the world, particularly in developing countries.
• Abstract

The project funded digitisation equipment and staff in partner institutes. The funding is now finished. The sustainability model is based on subscriptions by users. Some data and low resolution images are freely available on the Global Plants website (plants.jstor.org). High resolution images and additional functionality including measuring tools are available to subscribers. The rights to the data and images are retained by the source institute and they are free to make the data and high resolution images freely available on their own websites or in other aggregators.