Arctos Happenings
10 July 2020
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Have a Great Idea or Announcement for Arctos?
Suggest an Article for the Newsletter!
Started in 2018, the Arctos Newsletter is a quarterly publication that brings you basic information on what is going on with the Arctos community. You can read all of the previous issues of the Newsletter here.
Articles in the newsletter include:
- Introductions and information on the newest collections to join our community (New Collection Spotlight)
- Information on online Arctos training, including webinars and tutorial blitz
- Ways to get involved with Arctos, such as calls for help with Arctos Working Group Projects, Committees, and open Arctos Officer positions.
- Information on new online features and tools in the Arctos database (Arctos Feature Highlights)
- Important happenings in Arctos programming and governance
- Publications and presentations
Just like Arctos, the Newsletter is an evolving entity that responds to the interests and needs of the Arctos Community. Two new sections suggested by Arctos members that have been added this quarter include:
- Arctos People - a section with short articles on the people behind Arctos and its collections.
- Arctos Family Announcements - information on events and important milestones in the lives of our community members.
You can help the Newsletter continue to develop and grow by suggesting articles on the Arctos Newsletter Github repository Arctos Newsletter Github repository. Suggest a new article, help us with editing, point out a publication we missed, there are lots of ways to get involved!
Never used Github before? No worries, we have you covered! Here is a great article on how to use Githubt in the Arctos Handbook: How to Get Started in Github
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Double Check How You Stay in Contact with Arctos
With the recent Arctos outage and switch to PG, this is a good time to double check that your collection is keeping in contact with Arctos in the best way possible. This way you can make sure you get the latest Arctos news, and you can tell Arctos when you have new ideas or find problems that we need to fix.
What are the best ways to stay in contact with Arctos? You've already done the first step by signing up and reading this newsletter (thank you!). Here are some additional steps we highly recommend:
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Make sure at least one person in your institution has a GitHub account, and knows how to access and participate in the Arctos GitHub repository. Not familiar with GitHub? Don't worry Arctos has you covered. Check out this article in the Arctos Handbook: How to Get Started in GitHub.
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Have one person from your museum join the Arctos Working Group.
The Working Group meets twice a month to discuss specific issues, suggestions, problems, and changes in Arctos. You can find more info on what the Working Group does in the Arctos Working Group Guidelines. If you would like to join the Arctos Working Group, please email the Arctos Working Group officers (arctos-working-group-officers@googlegroups.com).
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Join the Arctos email group to receive emails about outages, changes to services, and general information. You can join the Arctos email group by emailing the Arctos Working Group officers and requesting access. Please remember to tell us what collection you are a part of in your email.
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Arctos Feature Highlights
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How To Request Code Table Changes in Arctos
Teresa Mayfield-Meyer
Code Tables in Arctos store controlled vocabularies. You'll encounter them when you are cataloging objects, creating loans, editing agents, and lots of other places in your curatorial work.
Code Table vocabularies are managed by the Arctos Community. If you are interested in adding terms to or changing terms in a Code Table there is now a formal way to submit these requests, and you can find the instructions in the Arctos Handbook under: How to Request a Code Table Addition or Change
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Changes to Primary and Secondary Identifiers
The Arctos Code Table Committee
The Other ID types "original identifier" and "secondary identifier" are used somewhat randomly and inconsistently and neither is very well defined.
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The Arctos Working Group recommendation at the April 2020 Issues Meeting was to combine these into one field called "other identifier." The implications of this decision are that all records with an "original identifier" or "secondary identifier" will be converted to "other identifier", the terms "original identifier" and "secondary identifier" will be removed from the Other ID Types code table, and "other identifier" will be added to it with the definition "Values that link a specimen with its data that are not known to be of a more defined identifier type."
We plan to implement this change after July 31, 2020. If you object to the change, please post your objection in the GitHub Issue (Issue #2588) so that we can continue discussion if necessary.
Thanks!
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Arctos License and Terms Update
Carla Cicero
The Arctos Working Group has developed a new set of guidelines for choosing licensing and terms for data and media, and the data structure has been modified to accommodate this. We encourage every Arctos collection to review their metadata (Manage Collection) and select licenses and terms that will be downloaded and exported with their collection records. |
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New Collection Spotlight
Arctos Welcomes the University of Connecticut Biodiversity Research Collections!
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The University of Connecticut Biodiversity Research Collections (UCONN BRC) has just joined Arctos! The BRC Vertebrate Division, located in Storrs CT, is a rich resource of specimens and data dedicated to research, teaching, and outreach. Its holdings are curated to the highest standards for use by the research community, and it contributes biodiversity data to worldwide digitization efforts. The collections also are used in both formal and informal instruction at UCONN to train the next generation of vertebrate organismal biologists. The first collection to join Arctos will be ornithology, which includes 10,813 specimens. Most of UCONN’s specimens are preserved as round study skins, though they also have taxidermied specimens, skeletons, fluid specimens, eggs, and a separate feather collection (from the work of Alan Brush). The ornithology collection began with the donation of study skins (dated between 1875 to 1925) from the private collections of J. H. Sage and W. E. Treat. The UCONN collection of study skins holds more Connecticut specimens than any other collection in the world.
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Welcome to the first news section on Arctos People!
In this section we will be introducing the people who work on Arctos behind the scenes, including programmers, database managers, curators, and researchers. If you have someone you would like us to introduce to the Arctos community, please feel free to add a new article issue to the Arctos Newsletter GitHub Repository. (Details on how to access the repository can be found in this Newsletter)
To start us off we thought it would be very appropriate to begin with:
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Dusty McDonald (dustymc@gmail.com), the lead programmer for Arctos
Dusty is based in Sacramento, CA. All of Dusty’s work originates in the vast digital realm where he is the main engineer for Arctos, but also works on helping to design and debug Arctos and all of its features. Dusty has been working with Arctos since the very beginning (~1999), when the roots of Arctos first started as a new information management model for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and were implemented by the University of Alaska. When asked what he really does for Arctos, Dusty says he likes to help “in digitizing good ideas”.
His favorite thing about Arctos is our ability to communicate and work with multiple different types of data, and to meet the challenges presented by the development of novel kinds of information. When asked what things he would love to see happen with Arctos in the future, Dusty pointed out that it would be great having more resources to bring experts and technical support together to help work on technical problems, and meetings to bring the members of Arctos together to discuss and focus on solutions for the community.
When asked how we can help Dusty to make Arctos better, he replied: “Please use GitHub. Arctos is a collection of good ideas from users, and exposure to our diverse community just makes them better. (Even if we occasionally get confused or distracted.)”
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Arctos Family Announcements
Arctos would like to congratulate Kyndall Hildebrandt, and welcome Mae Anne Powers (Hildebrandt) to this big wide world!
Kyndall has been an active member in the Arctos Community, Working Group, and Officer corps for about 20 years. When she’s on Arctos, she is using the object tracking feature to help her keep track of the 200,000+ genetic resource collection at the University of Alaska Museum, and has created over 12,000 records in five different collections!
Fun fact about Mae Anne’s arrival to the Arctos Community, Kyndall says she was as long and as heavy as specimen UAM 115732 (a Marmota monax) from Fairbanks, Alaska. https://arctos.database.museum/guid/UAM:Mamm:115732 |
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Seeking Volunteers for Treasurer and Membership Manager Arctos Officer Positions
Are you interested in becoming more involved in Arctos and the Arctos Working Group? A great way to help is to volunteer as an Officer for the Arctos Working Group!
We are currently searching for Co-Treasurer and Co-Membership Manager Officers. A Co-Officer position works alongside the current Officer for a year, and then takes over as the the Officer for the next two years.
Responsibilities of the Treasurer Officer focus on:
- Working with the Steering Committee, Arctos Working Group Officers, and programers to determine costs and fees for existing and incoming collections.
- Helping Incoming Collections understand and estimate potential fees and costs.
- Providing a yearly financial report to the Steering Committee.
Responsibilities of the Membership Manager Officer include:
- Managing the Arctos Working Group Membership and Agent lists.
- Assisting new collections staff in joining Arctos, including the Arctos GitHub repositories.
- Working with other Arctos Officers to invite and welcome new collections to Arctos.
If you are interested in either position or have any questions, please email the Arctos Working Group Officers (arctos-working-group-officers@googlegroups.com ).
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Become Part of the Arctos Community
Arctos is a growing community, with many new developments, and everyone is invited to participate. Please see below for ways you can contribute to the Arctos community and participate in ongoing discussions about improving Arctos for collections management, research, education, and outreach:
1) Subscribe to Arctos Github and Participate in the monthly Critical Issues Meetings! to be able to post and watch issues, comments, suggestions; provide and receive community input.
2) Join the Arctos Working Group is open to any participating institution; contribute to Arctos governance, development, and sustainability. We meet monthly. We need one person from each institution on the Arctos Working Group and GitHub.
3) Participate in outreach and webinars - help develop the Learn tab on our new website, arctosdb.org!
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