A botanical demonstration of the potential of linking data using unique identifiers for people

Güntsch, Anton; Groom, Quentin; Ernst, Marcus; Holetschek, Jörg; Plank, Andreas; Röpert, Dominik; Fichtmüller, David; Shorthouse, David; Hyam, Roger; Dillen, Mathias; Trekels, Maarten; Haston, Elspeth; Rainer, Heimo

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0261130

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…There are many semi-structured data elements in collection management systems that could benefit from the application of shared, unique identifiers in open data curation environments with roundtrips back to their source. Geographic place names, scientific names and concepts and bibliographic references are prime candidates to help democratise the exchange of metadata and information through unified services that increase efficiencies, deduplicate effort and engender new collaborations ( Nicolson et al 2018 , Güntsch et al 2021 ).…”

Section: The Informatics Landscape Of Disambiguationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, it is part of the evolution of collection data management that ends when people are identified as unambiguously as possible. Full disambiguation is many years off, but rapid progress can be made for the vast majority of cases as outlined by Groom et al (2020) and Güntsch et al (2021) . Below, we propose a number of specific objectives for the next phase of activity.…”

Section: The Next Steps For Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Disambiguation is a process that brings multiple benefits. Clarifying the "who" for specimens extends the number of records useful for research by linking them together; it aids data analysis by helping identify duplicate specimens collected by the one person; it helps resolve past and present collector networks ( Groom et al 2014 , Meeus et al 2021 ); it supplies collections with information they can use to better resolve their holdings and share with other collections ( Groom et al 2020 , Güntsch et al 2021 ); it facilitates discovery of a given group of experts through time and space; it provides researchers with additional and direct paths to publishing their collecting and identifying expertise-effort; and, lastly, it demonstrates how the work of each individual contributes to the biodiversity knowledge graph ( Page 2016 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The disambiguation of people names in biological collections

Groom¹,

Bräuchler²,

Cubey³

et al. 2022

BDJ

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Scientific collections have been built by people. For hundreds of years, people have collected, studied, identified, preserved, documented and curated collection specimens. Understanding who those people are is of interest to historians, but much more can be made of these data by other stakeholders once they have been linked to the people’s identities and their biographies. Knowing who people are helps us attribute work correctly, validate data and understand the scientific contribution of people and institutions. We can evaluate the work they have done, the interests they have, the places they have worked and what they have created from the specimens they have collected. The problem is that all we know about most of the people associated with collections are their names written on specimens. Disambiguating these people is the challenge that this paper addresses. Disambiguation of people often proves difficult in isolation and can result in staff or researchers independently trying to determine the identity of specific individuals over and over again. By sharing biographical data and building an open, collectively maintained dataset with shared knowledge, expertise and resources, it is possible to collectively deduce the identities of individuals, aggregate biographical information for each person, reduce duplication of effort and share the information locally and globally. The authors of this paper aspire to disambiguate all person names efficiently and fully in all their variations across the entirety of the biological sciences, starting with collections. Towards that vision, this paper has three key aims: to improve the linking, validation, enhancement and valorisation of person-related information within and between collections, databases and publications; to suggest good practice for identifying people involved in biological collections; and to promote coordination amongst all stakeholders, including individuals, natural history collections, institutions, learned societies, government agencies and data aggregators.

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Section: The Informatics Landscape Of Disambiguationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Next Steps For Collectionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The disambiguation of people names in biological collections

Groom¹,

Bräuchler²,

Cubey³

et al. 2022

BDJ

Self Cite

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Geodata of the Moscow University Herbarium: Data Structure and Georeferencing Methodics

Seregin,

Pashkina,

Pospelov

2023

Botanicheskii Zhurnal

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Digitisation of the Moscow University Herbarium (MW) was started in the spring of 2015. Since October 2016, we have been publishing the images of specimens on the portal of the Moscow Digital Herbarium (https://plant.depo.msu.ru/) in open access mode. Gradually, we started to publish extended metadata on our portal, like full transcriptions of labels and georeferences, i.e. the coordinates of collection sites for each specimen. As of January, 14, 2023, two thirds of the specimens of the Moscow University Herbarium (693168 specimens, or 66%) are georeferenced, while 359593 specimens are still in work. The article describes the geodata of the Moscow University Herbarium both in the geographical aspect (data coverage for different regions) and in the aspect of georeferencing accuracy. General guidelines for georeferencing herbarium collections are given.

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Community Data Mobilization in Wikidata: A paleontology perspective

Little¹,

Karim²,

Krimmel³

et al. 2022

BISS

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Wikidata offers a centralized, accessible platform for working collaboratively to disambiguate entities, e.g., people associated with biodiversity collections, and to mobilize information about them. This shared information can be used to improve connections across institutions and individuals, to augment local data records, and to encourage expertise-sharing. Over the past year, the Paleo Data Working Group has organized several events to bring the Wikidata movement to paleontological collections. This talk will share key products and findings generated by these efforts, and note parallels to disciplines beyond paleontology. In the global collections community, momentum has been building to leverage linked data principles and facilitate data discovery using the Wikidata platform. An example of this is the increasing adoption of Wikidata specifically for the purpose of storing biographical information about people associated with collections, because doing so facilitates discovery about who is doing what work across multiple institutions, and with what impact (Groom et al. 2020, Güntsch et al. 2021). In March 2022, thirty participants gathered virtually for a participatory workshop, Using Wikidata to capture and share information about people in paleontology. This workshop was an introduction to finding, editing, and using data in Wikidata, focusing on people associated with paleontology collections (e.g., collectors, researchers, collections staff) as subjects. Together, workshop participants created or enhanced Wikidata records for around 100 individuals from a shared list, including a dozen female collectors previously known only by their husbands’ names, e.g., “Mrs. Paul E. Drez,” who we now know is Nancy Sue Drez. At the conclusion of the workshop, participants collaborated on an open-access document to share the findings. The goal of Guidelines for Using Wikidata to Mobilize Information about People in Collections: A Paleontology Perspective (see Bauer et al. 2022 for repository) is to further encourage uptake in the paleontological and collections communities. The first workshop was focused almost exclusively on the people connected to paleontological collections. A follow-up workshop in October 2022 entitled, Using Wikidata to capture and share information about paleontological collecting sites, significantly broadens this scope by exploring how Wikidata can be used to mobilize community knowledge about specimen collecting events, such as sites or expeditions. Paleontological collecting sites pose an information management challenge because they tend to be detail rich, attached to local but stable identifier schemes, and associated with specimens curated in multiple institutions. Participants in this workshop established a defined scope of information associated with a paleontological collection site–including flagging aspects of the data that may be problematic to share publicly–and subsequently were able to assess how these information needs might, or might not, fit into a linked data model on Wikidata. These findings are particularly relevant to the global collections community where we see a trend towards sharing specimen data from an event-based perspective (Schindel and Cook 2018, Robertson et al. 2019), as has long been the norm for paleontological specimens.

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A botanical demonstration of the potential of linking data using unique identifiers for people

Cited by 6 publications

References 14 publications

The disambiguation of people names in biological collections

The disambiguation of people names in biological collections

Geodata of the Moscow University Herbarium: Data Structure and Georeferencing Methodics

Community Data Mobilization in Wikidata: A paleontology perspective

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