Symbiota Working Group

Overview

The Symbiota Working Group meets monthly as a group to discuss timely items of interest, contact Andy Miller or Neil Cobb for additional information.
The Symbiota Working Group is composed of developers and end users, where end users include primarily managers of Symbiota portals but can be any end user who wants to help improve Symbiota as a software application or the data portal functionality as a whole. The 29 Symbiota portals encompass plants, lichens, bryophytes, algae, fungi, invertebrates, and to a lesser degree vertebrates. Symbiota portals primarily function as web portals for museums to submit and annotate specimen or observation records. Symbiota portals serve the data to iDigBio and to any other aggregators that want to harvest Darwin Core archives. Symbiota also provides data packaging (e.g., checklists) visualization (mapping and images), education material (keys, identification quizzes) and easy access to data sets as downloadable CSV files. Thus, Symbiota portals allow researchers to compile and screen data sets for further analysis or educators to integrate biodiversity data for use in the classroom. A key challenge is to know when it is good to develop a capacity in Symbiota, partner with a third party to provide added functionality (e.g., georeferencing, mapping) and when to let another entity provide the functionality (e.g., dedicated aggregator). Now is an important point in time to develop a Symbiota roadmap that will more efficiently guide us over the next few years and beyond when funding is less certain.

The listserv is self serve: https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/IDigBio_Listservs#Symbiota_Working_Group

Webinar Series

2018

January-February

1/17/2018 Developing Education-Outreach (Anne Basham & Neil Cobb)

1/31/2018 The Oregon Flora Portal (Linda Hardison)

2/21/2018 Documenting the Ethnobiology of Mexico and Central America (DEMCA)

March-April

3/7/2018 Update on Genetic linkages (Andy Miller) and Paleo functionality (Neil Cobb)

3/28/2018 Improving Data Entry options -(Mary Barkworth)

4/16/2028 Data Cleaning Module (Anne Barber)

May-June

5/3/2018 Refactoring  Symbiota (Curtis Dyerson)

5/21/2018 Usage Stats and publication linking (Ben Brandt)

6/6/2018 End of year open discussion

2017

October 11, 2017 Spatial Module I (Ben Brandt) Recording

October 27, 2017 Spatial Module II (Ben Brandt) Recording

November 30, 2017 Georeferencing CoGe I (Herrick Brown)Recording

December 18 2017 Computer Vision (Andre Poremski) Recording

2016

Topics and Recordings

[Google Event/Meeting Calendar - Caution - in Pacific Time] https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=i2m1qk0c44fn38b32104ikdh1s@group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Los_Angeles&pli=1

SWG Webinar Series https://www.idigbio.org/wiki/index.php/SWG_Webinar_Series

Collection Management Features – Elizabeth Lippoldt (MiCC) January 15, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of collection management features used in Symbiota portals including creating accounts and assigning permissions, entering skeletal records, searching via the Occurrence Editor, monitoring statistics, duplicate cleaning, and downloading data.

Record Creation – Michael Denslow (SERNEC) February 19, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of methods used in Symbiota portals for creating skeletal (Stage 1) records and transcribed (Stage 2) occurrence records.

Transcription – Julianne Smith (LBCC) March 18, 2016

Webinar Recording
A walkthrough of the full occurrence record form used in Symbiota portals including defining terms, navigating the image display, and the general protocol for transcribing Stage 1 records into Stage 2 records with the assistance of OCR and NLP.

Georeferencing – Anne Barber (SCAN) April 15, 2016

Webinar Recording
A walkthrough of the process of batch-georeferencing specimens in Symbiota portals using Geolocate and Google Maps as well as the sharing of tips and tricks.
Webiner materials - Anne's Googledoc

Crowdsourcing – Mari Roberts (MaCC) May 20, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of the Symbiota crowdsourcing features for establishing, performing, and reviewing crowdsourced data from both the volunteer and portal manager perspectives.
Webinar Material Getting Started with Crowdsourcing - Using Symbiota by Mari Roberts (NYBG)

Webinar Request – June 17, 2016

Webinar Recording
A webinar focused on the participants asking the expert anything Symbiota related.

Creating and maintaining checklists – Steven Buckley (US National Park Service) September 16, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of the checklist feature used in Symbiota portals including creating and managing checklists, searching for and associating vouchers, downloading data and managing checklist conflicts, and using the parent-child checklist functions for aggregating data.

Creating and using taxonomic keys – Scott Bates (Purdue University) October 21, 2016

Webinar Recording
Symbiota software includes a fully integrated system for dynamic keying that includes a suite of tools for key character development. In this SWG webinar, dynamic keying within Symbiota portals will be demonstrated, and an overview of key character creation will be presented.

The GEOLocate Toolkit – Michael Denslow and Herrick Brown (SERNEC) November 18, 2016

Webinar Recording
Symbiota software includes a GEOLocate Toolkit that leverages the power of Collaborative Georeferencing and provides realtime updates to coordinate values for selected records. In this SWG webinar, use of the GEOLocate Toolkit will be demonstrated, and an overview of the requirements for selecting sets of eligible records will be presented.

Linking Genetic Data to and from Symbiota portals – Andrew Miller (MiCC) December 16, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of how to add genetic data to records in Symbiota portals and how to use the LinkOut feature in GenBank to link back to these records.

Collection Management Features – Elizabeth Lippoldt (MiCC) January 15, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of collection management features used in Symbiota portals including creating accounts and assigning permissions, entering skeletal records, searching via the Occurrence Editor, monitoring statistics, duplicate cleaning, and downloading data.

Record Creation – Michael Denslow (SERNEC) February 19, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of methods used in Symbiota portals for creating skeletal (Stage 1) records and transcribed (Stage 2) occurrence records.

Transcription – Julianne Smith (LBCC) March 18, 2016

Webinar Recording
A walkthrough of the full occurrence record form used in Symbiota portals including defining terms, navigating the image display, and the general protocol for transcribing Stage 1 records into Stage 2 records with the assistance of OCR and NLP.

Georeferencing – Anne Barber (SCAN) April 15, 2016

Webinar Recording
A walkthrough of the process of batch-georeferencing specimens in Symbiota portals using Geolocate and Google Maps as well as the sharing of tips and tricks.
Webiner materials - Anne's Googledoc

Crowdsourcing – Mari Roberts (MaCC) May 20, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of the Symbiota crowdsourcing features for establishing, performing, and reviewing crowdsourced data from both the volunteer and portal manager perspectives.
Webinar Material Getting Started with Crowdsourcing - Using Symbiota by Mari Roberts (NYBG)

Webinar Request – June 17, 2016

Webinar Recording
A webinar focused on the participants asking the expert anything Symbiota related.

Creating and maintaining checklists – Steven Buckley (US National Park Service) September 16, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of the checklist feature used in Symbiota portals including creating and managing checklists, searching for and associating vouchers, downloading data and managing checklist conflicts, and using the parent-child checklist functions for aggregating data.

Creating and using taxonomic keys – Scott Bates (Purdue University) October 21, 2016

Webinar Recording
Symbiota software includes a fully integrated system for dynamic keying that includes a suite of tools for key character development. In this SWG webinar, dynamic keying within Symbiota portals will be demonstrated, and an overview of key character creation will be presented.

The GEOLocate Toolkit – Michael Denslow and Herrick Brown (SERNEC) November 18, 2016

Webinar Recording
Symbiota software includes a GEOLocate Toolkit that leverages the power of Collaborative Georeferencing and provides realtime updates to coordinate values for selected records. In this SWG webinar, use of the GEOLocate Toolkit will be demonstrated, and an overview of the requirements for selecting sets of eligible records will be presented.

Linking Genetic Data to and from Symbiota portals – Andrew Miller (MiCC) December 16, 2016

Webinar Recording
An overview of how to add genetic data to records in Symbiota portals and how to use the LinkOut feature in GenBank to link back to these records.

2015

June 30, 2015 Taxonomic Trees (David Fleming) Not Recorded

April 23, 2015 Checklists (David Fleming) Recording

2014

December 15, 2014 The value of the Symbiota Portal and Database for Small Collections (Ed Gilbert) (Not Recorded)

October 21, 2014 Exsiccati (Ed Gilbert) Recorded

September 9, 2014 Crowdsource data entry (Ed Gilbert) Recording

September 3, 2014 Checklist Management (Ed Gilbert) Recording

August 27, 2014 Introduction to Specimen Management (Ed Gilbert) Recording

Working Group Meetings

Location: AdobeConnect: https://idigbio.adobeconnect.com/room/​

1. December 15, 2015 - Agenda
2. January 27, 2016 - Recording
3. March 3, 2016 - Recording
4. April 25, 2016 - Recording
5. June 2, 2016 - Recording
6. October 25, 2016 - Recording

• Link from Steve Buckley - NPS on generating field guides, and about NPSpecies
  • Example http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/sodn/inventory/floraproject.cfm

1. January 25, 2017 - Recording
2. September 11, 2017 - Recording