April 28-30, 2014 | Cambridge, MA
A key component in the development of iDigBio’s public participation tool, BIOSPEX, is being integrated through the efforts of iDigBio PI Greg Riccardi with FilteredPush.
Public participation is vital to processing the vast amount of specimen records that remain accessible only on paper as well as correcting original errors and updating these records. BIOSPEX offers novel and entertaining way to package these tasks and 
engage the public. The BIOSPEX tool packages information from specimen labels, such as scientific name, collector name, and locality, in a virtual expedition complete with interactive graphics and award badges. These data are presented to the public through sites like Notes From Nature. Public participants on Notes From Nature annotate and transcribe the labels, virtually capturing the data.
However, returning the public transcription results to specimen catalog managers for verification and integration has been problematic. The NSF funded FilteredPush project is proving quite useful in this process. As an acquisition, management, and distribution tool, FilteredPush connects remote sites where annotations are being stored, like BIOSPEX, with the authoritative databases of the collections holding the specimens. The FilteredPush name reflects its function: as annotations are Pushed back to the authoritative data sets, the curators and collection managers can Filter to accept or reject annotations of their data.
Catalog management tools like Specify and Symbiota have plug-ins that help collection managers evaluate and integrate these fields into their database.
Much of the national digitization effort relies on public participation to capture label information. The BIOSPEX system is a critical tool for making these efforts effective, and integration of FilteredPush is an important piece of the BIOSPEX implementation.
