Arctos Happenings
09 April 2018
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Arctos as an Entity
The Arctos Steering Committee (ASG) working with the Arctos Working Group (AWG) are exploring ways to make Arctos a non-profit entity. This would allow us to organize all of Arctos different functions such as emails for ASC and AWG for officers, accounts such as for the Arctos webpage, and better track income and apply for grants. Please contact the Working Group or sign up at https://github.com/ArctosDB/arctos/issues/1470 if you are interested in contributing to Arctos long-term sustainability.
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New Collection Spotlight
We'd like to Welcome the University of New Mexico Earth Sciences to Arctos!
The University of New Mexico Earth Science Collections includes a variety of paleobiological, rock, and mineral specimens. The paleobiology collection (UNMP) includes over 25,000 specimens, primarily of marine invertebrate and terrestrial plant fossils. The collection spans the entire Phanerozoic Eon, and the geographic scope is global, with an emphasis on specimens from New Mexico and the surrounding region. Many of these regional specimens are not well represented in other academic or national museum collections. Flora and fauna from the Carboniferous, Permian, and Cretaceous Periods are particularly well represented. The collection also includes more than 50 type specimens of Pennsylvanian and Early Cretaceous mollusks and Pennsylvanian insects. Preservation of specimens is primarily as body or trace fossils. The petrologic and mineral collections consist of over 20,000 specimens spanning from the Proterozoic to Modern and containing notable specimens from the Southwest region and globally. These collections include unique petrologic collections from the Harding Pegmatite Mine, NM and Chuar Group from the Grand Canyon region. Preservation of specimens is primarily as hand samples, thin sections, and rock/mineral powders. In addition to research collections, both the paleobiology and rock/mineral divisions maintain a broad teaching collection spanning all major animal phyla, and major rock and mineral groups.
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Interested in joining Arctos or know a collection that is looking for an amazing collection management solution? Have them contact the Arctos Working Group at arctos-working-group@googlegroups.com.
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Arctos AWG Sub-Group Project Updates
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Where does Arctos stand with geography?
Arctos is unique in sharing its locality-related tables across all of the collections. There are challenges to merging many collections-worth of higher geography and locality together, but there are clear advantages, too. One clear advantage is to draw on like-minded specialists across the Arctos community. We’ve created a geography-focused subcommittee from the Working Group (Geo-group Github Team) to identify and tackle issues before bringing them to the broader community. Our first tackle was simply to define what we mean by locality and geography specifically in Arctos (thanks to Dusty for getting the heart of the issue!) What do we want to do with that information in a shared and normalized context? How are we using locality and geography already and how can we improve? We’ve drafted the first pass at answering that, defining criteria for consistency, and trying to idealize how best to think about and use the related tables in Arctos. Our next steps will be to go through locality tagged issues on Github and start applying the definitions and criteria once we have them approved. Contact Michelle Koo if you want to join the “Geo-nerds”!
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Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Grant
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GGBN is a consortium with the aim to publish and aggregate genomic data online. Funding in 2017 through GGBN was for initial work to crosswalk Arctos and GGBN data standards to facilitate sharing. We are applying for the second round of funding to implement a LIMS plug-in that would allow Arctos to be linked to lab data, environmental samples, attribution back to GGBN and Arctos, and funding for VertNet to publish GGBN data through Arctos IPT.
The first three Arctos collections to join in 2017 were the Museum of Vertebrate Biology, UC Berkeley; the University of Alaska Museum of the North, and the Museum of Southwestern Biology, University of New Mexico, and data from these institutions should be up on the GGBN portal shortly. See http://www.ggbn.org/ggbn_portal/ for more information.
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Arctos Publication
In January, the Arctos Working Group discussed the need for publications describing Arctos, its advantages for collection managers, its contributions to the biodiversity collections community and its community structure among other ideas. The following working group members expressed an interest in pursuing this goal: Dusty, Matt Bowser, Teresa Mayfield, Carla Cicero, Michelle Koo, Angela Linn, Mariel Campbell, Beth Womack, Jon Dunnum, and Carol Spencer. To date, the group has not had an official meeting or submitted any progress reports. Anyone interested in leading these fine people, please stand up!
As a side note, a project has been started in GitHub, and the Geography Group has a document started that could become a publication. We just need someone to lead the charge.
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Environmental Data and Samples
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The University of Alaska Museum has begun to add an Environmental Collection into Arctos. The collection consists of DNA extractions and filter paper that was collected around the state of Alaska to look for the presence or absence of wood frog DNA. Mariel Campbell, Dusty McDonald, and Kyndall Hildebrandt are working on the best way to enter these environmental samples into Arctos and make them general enough that other collections could follow suit.
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Arctos Webinars
Arctos started hosting monthly webinars in collaboration with Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) in September of 2017. Topics have ranged from Arctos transactions, Projects and Publications to an Introduction to Cultural Collections in Arctos. For a list of upcoming Arctos webinars or to view past webinars, visit arctosdb.org/learn/webinars/.
Upcoming Webinars:
4/10: Tissues, Containers, and Object Tracking in Arctos
05/08: Arctos Reports
06/12: Arctos Help Day
Join us via Adobe Connect. Visit idigbio.org/content/arctos-webinar-series-data-entry-and-bulkloading.
Interested in participating in a webinar or have an idea for a webinar? Contact the Arctos working group at arctos-working-group@googlegroups.com.
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