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

SPNHC Travel Grants - NHCCN

The Natural History Collections Club Network (NHCCN) plans to host a workshop at the annual meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) in Chicago, IL. We are seeking participants to apply for a travel grant to attend the meeting and the workshop. The meeting dates are May 26-31, 2019. Qualified individuals should be affiliated with a college or university within the US and interested in starting a natural history collections club at that institution. Preference will be given to faculty and student pairs. NHCCN is made of several clubs that are curator-advised, student-driven organizations aimed at enhancing local natural history collections by helping to train student volunteers to assist in curating and managing them. The network represents clubs from all types of universities but seems to most benefit those with small collections as a way to protect and raise enthusiasm for their collections. We are particularly interested in institutions with small collections and/or minority serving institutions but anyone is welcome to apply.

Deadline to apply: February 24, 2019

Link to Application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfgPbZJFy0u7oEBMOw1TEeXwcm6Zr5txyPVdexkM7111cxyWw/viewform

Please contact Kari Harris at kharris@astate.edu for more information.

Registration Now Open for 3rd Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference, Yale Peabody Museum

The Peabody Museum at Yale University and iDigBio at the Florida Museum, University of Florida, in association with the Natural Sciences Collections Alliance are delighted to announce that registration is now open for the 2019 Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference, this year hosted on the Yale campus, New Haven, CT, 10-12 June. The theme for this year’s event is Methods, Protocols, and Analytical Tools for Specimen-based Research in the Biological Sciences.

Registration is now open! https://www.idigbio.org/content/save-date-methods-protocols-and-analytical-tools-specimen-based-research-biological-sciences#overlay-context=.

The conference planning team is extremely pleased to also collaborate with the Ecological Society of America (ESA) on its popular and successful Sustaining Biological Infrastructure: Strategies for Success course, to be held 12-14 June in conjunction with the conference.

This year’s conference will again offer opportunities to submit abstracts for hosting discussion sessions ranging in length from 30 to 75 minutes, a very popular activity begun last year, as well as abstracts for oral and poster presentations.

New this year will be the opportunity to submit abstracts for half or full-day workshops and symposia to be held on Wednesday the 12^th. Although workshops during the previous two conferences were well attended with positive responses, the planning team believes that opening up workshop submission opportunities to a wider range of participants will result in even more relevant topics. Those who want to submit a workshop or symposium abstract will need to register early as workshop/symposia proposals are due by 23 March. Those who want to submit discussion, oral, or poster presentation abstracts must register before the 30 April abstract deadline. You will receive a link to the abstract submission page with your registration confirmation.

Registration is now open and closes 17 May.

To register and learn more: https://www.idigbio.org/content/save-date-methods-protocols-and-analytical-tools-specimen-based-research-biological-sciences#overlay-context=.

Public Comment Requested for BCoN Report: Extending U.S. Biodiversity Collections to Address National Challenges

We are pleased to alert you to the availability of a new draft report from the Biodiversity Collections Network (BCoN). The document, Extending U.S. Biodiversity Collections to Address National Challenges, is the outcome of a workshop convened on 30 October and 1 November 2018 at Oak Spring Garden in Upperville, Virginia. That workshop was informed by prior BCoN workshops and reports, scientific literature, a community survey, and several community dialogues convened at scientific meetings during 2018. The workshop addressed the future deployment of data held in U.S. biodiversity collections for research, policy, and education.

BCoN invites public comment on this draft report. The comment period is open until 5:00 PM Eastern on 1 February 2019. Comments should be emailed to Dr. Barbara Thiers at bthiers@nybg.org.

To read the report and supporting materials, please visit https://bcon.aibs.org/2019/01/16/community-input-requested-extending-u-s-biodiversity-collections-to-address-national-challenges/

Thank you for your contributions to this important effort.

Sincerely,

The BCoN Advisory Committee

Job announcement: Internship with Endless Forms TCN

The New York Botanical Garden Herbarium is seeking to hire two paid interns as part of a multi-institutional NSF-funded Digitization TCN: Digitizing "Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful: Facilitating Research on Imperiled Plants with Extreme Morphologies."

Interns will assist with the barcoding, imaging, and data transcription of carnivorous, epiphytic, and succulent plant herbarium specimens in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium at The New York Botanical Garden. Applicants should be biology/botany/museum majors or recent graduates, have a desire to work in a museum setting, and be team and detail oriented.

Applications due by January 18th.

Dr. Barbara M. Thiers
Vice President
Patricia K. Holmgren Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium
Curator of Bryophytes
Editor, Index Herbariorum
President, Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
New York Botanical Garden
Bronx, NY 10458-5126
bthiers@nybg.org
718-817-8626

Job Posting: Systems Administrator Programmer III at iDigBio

Job Description:

The majority of the activities are as a systems programmer and technology implementer for the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections (iDigBio) project. Design, implement and support complex ETL mappings to migrate large data volumes from heterogeneous source systems into a central NoSQL data store. Develop and use tools to perform data analytics, data manipulation, and reporting according to data consumer needs, and participate in the design of new or changing data mappings and workflows, evolving the iDigBio data model as data standards are updated and data growth need arises. Produce technical specification and documentation to effectively communicate with data providers and consumers.

Develop software for data-related cloud middleware and web portals. The incumbent will design, implement, and maintain storage, infrastructure, platform, and software clouds including software and hardware selection. Integrate external cloud and distributed data resources with resources developed as part of the projects. Collect and report performance and quality metrics to insure resources are meeting project goals. Create documentation and software packages to make work usable by other institutions. Train collaborators and end users on the cloud and software resources created. Liaise with developers and users of biological collection management systems providing data to iDigBio to gain an understanding of data requirements and functionality, to address data transformation issues, to develop tools that facilitate data quality improvement, and to enable bi-directional data flows.

Coordinate ingestion processes across national and international partner organizations. Interpret iDigBio project needs, stakeholder requests, and PI directives to drive prioritization and triage of tasks and issues. Interface directly with data providers when technical complexity exceeds the capabilities of mobilization staff. Collaborate with national and international organizations as needed to improve data quality and data sharing standards. Collaborate with Partner Projects and new potential partners by way of physical and virtual meetings. Manage the Data Ingestion and Mobilization meeting.

Assist in maintaining existing computer, networking, and software infrastructure in ACIS laboratory. Integrate infrastructure developed as part of the project into the overall resource offerings of the ACIS laboratory. Document best practices and develop technical support materials for ACIS hardware and software.

Deadline:

11:55 p.m. (ET) 16 November 2018

To learn more and apply:

http://explore.jobs.ufl.edu/cw/en-us/job/509223/system-adminprogrammer-iii