Community Announcements

Tell the iDigBio community about your upcoming events, projects or other items pertinent to biodiversity and biological collections.

Anyone with an iDigBio account may create a community announcement. Once logged in, you can create a new community announcement here: New Community Announcement

Ontology workshop @ USGS HQ, Nov 30 - Dec 3, 2015

VoCamp is a series of informal events where people can spend some dedicated time creating lightweight vocabularies/ontologies for the Semantic Web/Web of Data. The emphasis of the events is not on creating the perfect ontology in a particular domain, but on creating vocabs that are good enough for people to start using for publishing data on the Web. The intention is to follow a "paper first, laptops second" format, where the modelling is done initially on paper and only later committed to code. 
VoCamp 2015 workshop will take place at the USGS National facility starting at noon on Monday, November 30 and conclude mid-afternoon Thursday December 3 in Reston VA.  One topic concerns the effort by a group of people devoted to modeling ontology design patterns for key notions related to physical samples. This group will be working on the International Geo Sample Number (IGSN). The IGSN is 9-digit alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies samples from our natural environment and related sampling features.
For more details, see: http://vocamp.org/wiki/GeoVoCampDC2015.  There is no registration fee associated with the workshop.

Notice of Availability of Request for Information (RFI) – Bioarchive Services

On October 28, 2015, NEON, the National Ecological Observatory Network will be issuing a Request for Information (RFI) to determine the interest of organizations, institutions, collaborations and consortia in providing museum services in support of the NEON mission.  NEON is a large facility project funded by the National Science Foundation.  Throughout the 30 year life of the NEON observatory, a range of biological and physical samples and specimens will be collected from terrestrial and aquatic systems including insects, small mammals, fish, flora, soils, as well as wet and dry deposition.  These samples (collectively, the NEON Bioarchive) will require cataloging, curation and long term storage.  For more information on NEON and its mission, please visit www.neoninc.org.
 
Notices of Intent to Submit are due November 20, 2015 and submissions are due February 17, 2016.  All interested and qualified parties are encouraged to provide a submission.  The full RFI provides additional information and is available from the NEON Contracts Administrator, Steve McCormick at (720) 330-1668 or smccormick@neoninc.org.

Job Announcement: Collection Manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Herbarium

Job title: Collection Manager

The herbarium of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (PH) is seeking a full time collections manager.

To apply, please submit a resume and cover letter at www.drexeljobs.com. Click on “search postings” and type in “herbarium” as the key word to find this position. Review of applications will begin September 30 and continue until the position is filled.

Job overview: The Botany Department of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University is searching for a Collection Manager for the Herbarium to manage specimen care, data, and daily operations. Research in biodiversity informatics is encouraged.

Qualifications: Candidates should have a Master's Degree (Ph.D. desirable) from a recognized college or university, with training in botany, biology, or environmental science. Candidates with a Bachelor's degree and extensive experience will also be considered. A background in research in plant science, experience in museum operations, and biodiversity informatics are desirable. The candidate should be detail-oriented and a problem-solver, with excellent organizational and communication skills. The candidate should have the ability to work independently, be an effective team-leader, and supervise a diverse community of volunteers and students. 

Essential Functions:

--Manage the curation, loan activity, and organization of a large herbarium with over 1.2 million specimens of plants collected worldwide.

--Act as liaison with international and national scientific community, responding to requests for information, hosting visitors, and facilitating use of specimens for research and education.

--Maintain records of loans and other collection activities.

--Coordinate curation and routine care of the collection (integrated pest management, specimen repairs, facility trouble-shooting, oversee routine maintenance).

--Supervise a cohort of volunteers, interns, and students working on collections care.

--Participate in public education, museum programs, donor cultivation and other Academy service, including service on committees.

--Maintain and help develop databases and online portals for specimen images and data.

--Maintain and develop catalogs and other documentation of collections to monitor importance of herbarium for education and research missions of the institution.

--Assist in planning and policy development for the collection. 

Recruiting salary: $46,000

Posted at the request of:Tatyana Livshultz tatyana.livshultz@drexel.edu

Job @ Archbold Biological Station: Assistant Collections Manager

Archbold, a not-for-profit dedicated to long-term ecological research, education and conservation in south central Florida, is seeking a key team member to meet the objectives of an NSF CSBR award.  This is a three-year grant funded position with benefits.

Incumbent’s primary responsibility will be to work extensively with the Archbold arthropod collection, databasing and imaging specimen data, and moving the digitized data to the Internet via Symbiota-linked and other on-line portals under supervision of Entomology Program Director and Data Manager.  Will also work with digital databases for herbarium, birds, mammals, herptiles, fishes and bryophytes collections, imaging specimens, and moving the digitized data to internet.

Bachelor’s Degree in Entomology or related field in biology with 2-3 years’ experience working with entomology collections, or a Master’s Degree and 1 year of experience preferred.  Experience with curation of entomology collections critical, labeling specimens, barcoding and QR readers, and specimen imaging.  Strong computing skills required, especially in relational databases such as Specify or other collections management databases.

Additional information at http://www.archbold-station.org/html/aboutus/employ.html.

Please submit cover letter, resume, and three professional references, to hr@archbold-station.org.  Deadline October 2, 2015 or until filled, with anticipated early December to January start date. 

EOE/AA Employer

Data Carpentry Gets Moore Foundation Support to Expand Efforts

By Deborah Paul for iDigBio and Data Carpentrylogo for Data Carpentry

Keywords: Data Carpentry, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Biodiversity informatics skills, Reproducible research
Re: In support of 21st century biodiversity informatics skills and tools for reproducible research
Information Contact: info@datacarpentry.org

We’re happy to share news from Data Carpentry (DC) (http://datacarpentry.github.io/). The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation just agreed to DC’s grant proposal for funds to support staff and expand the reach of Data Carpentry and the development of more DC materials (https://github.com/datacarpentry).

[referenced from a prior blog post] From the COLLAB-IT* meeting in September of 2013, one break-out group coalesced an idea into action to form Data Carpentry. The IT groups from NESCent, BEACON, iDigBio, NEON, iPlant, SESYNC, DataONE, and NIMBios shared their observations about data literacy and computational literacy skills needs across the stakeholders in these overlapping communities. Course content needed to address these skills gaps make up the Data Carpentry curriculum.

Following the Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org) (SC) model, Data Carpentry seeks to improve and enhance researchers skills needed to collect, manage, and analyze data efficiently. We aim to teach skills that result in reproducible, sustainable scientific workflows that result in discoverable, re-useable datasets and reproducible analysis.

iDigBio team members (Matt Collins, Deb Paul, Kevin Love, Libby Ellwood) are actively involved in the DC and SC communities. You can join us too! Find out how at http://datacarpentry.github.io/. We’ve been using DC materials in our iDigBio workshops, and we are developing enhanced modules that focus on collections data use, re-use, visualization, analysis, and management. Some TCN and USGS members are participating as well including Katja Seltmann (TTD-TCN) and Derek Masaki (USGS-BISON).

We look forward to the opportunities this new funding will make possible. Thank you Moore Foundation for helping us address biodiversity informatics skills needs across our diverse communities.

Please let us know your thoughts. What skills do you need? What else do we need to cover? Got an idea for where to host one of these? Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more Data Carpentry!

Grant details: The DC Moore Foundation Grant Proposal is up on Figshare.

*Collaborative-IT (COLLAB-IT) is a group supported by funds from NSF through the SESYNC project. COLLAB-IT meets at least once-a-year. Members are from the IT staff across the NSF BioCenters including: BEACON, iPlant, DataONE, NIMBios, SESYNC, NESCent, NEON, and iDigBio. Our goals are to find overlapping synergies where we can work collaboratively toward meeting common/shared needs in our broader scientific communities.

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