Collections Catalogue - Daily Summaries

[dhobern]

Daily summary from 23 April 2020

@dhobern

This summary covers activity from 03:00 UTC to 23:00 UTC on 22 April 2020. The following questions and points were raised. Summaries in other languages are posted to the Spanish and Chinese consultation pages. Visit the consultation site to add your thoughts to these and other topics.

• 1.1. Directory to support the collections community (USE)
  • Response: The catalogue is important for building a sense of community and opportunities for new collaborations
• 1.2. Locating specimens and genetic materials (USE)
  • Response: The experience in the UK is that information on collections is heavily used.
  • Response: The catalogue can play an important role in simplifying linkages between specimen data and e.g. GenBank records.
  • Response: Different disciplines (different taxonomic groups) will need to be able to capture different sets of minimal information.
• 1.3. First step towards databasing collections (USE)
  • Response: Institutions need more guidance on how to share the data they have on their collections. Clear roadmaps and strategies will help.
• 1.6. Reducing duplication of effort (USE)
  • Response: There are opportunities to make it easier for other sectors to build a catalogue like the fish collection catalogue.
• 1.8. Improvements to citation and visibility for collections (USE)
  • Response: Some collection communities have good practices around how collections are referenced and cited, but this varies by sector.
• 1.9. Support for national and regional needs and applications (USE)
  • Response: It should be possible to scope and present the catalogue to serve the perspectives of different communities.
  • Response: Much of what is special about each collection relates to the significance of individual specimens.
• 2.2. Identifiers for collections (INFORMATION)
  • Response: The catalogue needs to be flexible about what is considered a collection. Maybe not all collections need human-readable identifiers.
• 2.3. Hierarchical collection structures and subcollections (INFORMATION)
  • Response: Users need pathways to find information for an institution or for a collection or for a dataset. These are different requirements.
• 2.4. Description of a collection (INFORMATION)
  • Response: Different disciplines or sectors should have the ability to agree different profiles of information to include and display.
• 3.1. Pathways and tools for publishing collection records (TECHNOLOGY)
  • Response: Institutions need pathways for updates to be published automatically.
• 3.2. Community catalogues (TECHNOLOGY)
  • Response: Access to edit records should be role-based rather than tied to a system or user.
• 3.4. Collection management systems (TECHNOLOGY)
  • Response: For many collections, the “collection management system” is Excel. This needs to be covered.
  • Response: Collection management systems can play a valuable role as a source of statistics on digitisation progress.
• Presentation: TDWG Collection Descriptions Data Standard Task Group
  • Response: The CD standard should include an element to show which collection management software is used by the collection.