CONCEPTUALIZING AND MANAGING PALEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTION DATA WITH SPECIFY SOFTWARE

The Specify Software Project (www.specifysoftware.org) supports biological and paleontological collections computing with Specify, an open-source, cross-platform, Java, database platform. Specify 7 for the web will be released in 2014 as an open-source, web browser-based application for collections. Specify 7 will enable collaborative specimen database hosting and joint projects across multiple institutions. Also in 2014, we are releasing Specify Insight, an iPad application which uses a distilled copy of a Specify database and its images and makes them portable and searchable taxonomically and geographically. We are also producing an iPad paleontological atlas for three groups of Ordovician, Pennsylvanian, and Neogene species as part of a multi-institutional, NSF/ADBC-funded collaboration “Paleoniches”.

During the last two years, the U.S. paleontological community organized several workshops related to collections software and the computerization of paleo specimen information. The iDigBio Project at the University of Florida sponsored some of those meetings, in addition to an EarthCube C4P RCN Paleobiology Workshop and several online video teleconferences with the iDigBio Paleo Digitization Working Group. One directed theme at the meetings was the conceptualization of paleontological information associated with specimens, data which includes stratigraphic descriptions as well as links to descriptors and attributes about localities and collecting events which in turn, are part of the information associated with specimens. Feedback from those discussions made it clear that practices associated with the digitization of paleo specimens across research collections is heterogeneous. Even though specimen and collection information concepts are not in rancorous dispute, nor difficult to model, in practice the use and logical assignment of paleontological descriptors to specimens varies considerably.

After an obligatory and gratuitous Specify Software promotion, this talk will review key issues with the description of the paleo attributes of specimens in the context of a database information model, the practical issues involved with old specimens and their data, and the flexibility needed by software interfaces to accommodate variation in curatorial practice.