The objective of this project is to expand GBIF’s community of data publishers to marine research stations and library collections by improving the capacity of the participating nodes to provide support to these potential publishers and the wealth of knowledge that they will provide to fill in geographic and temporal data gaps. This will be accomplished in two ways:
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Training series: A combined series of one 2-3 day workshop and two help desk working sessions. These sessions will introduce GBIF/OBIS and explore data quality, cleaning and publication tools and workflows. Training materials will be created and existing resources will be utilized from VertNet, BID and OBIS. Training will focus on streamlining the GBIF/OBIS publication pipeline for marine stations and libraries, but others will be welcome.
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Documentation: New written and video documentation will include fieldbook-to-portal workflows, a combined template for GBIF/OBIS data preparation and publication, and a marine-based case study for workshop participants, which will be provided to the BID curriculum.
All activities will include the use of the North American Regional and GBIF.us portals, hosted by the GBIF Secretariat. All activities will be evaluated through short-term participation metrics. Tools and documentation will be made available via hosted portals for on-going access and use.
Project progress
At final reporting the project successfully accomplished its objective and completed all proposed events and deliverables.
The project team developed and implemented a training series that included a 3-day ‘Fieldbook to Portal’ workshop, held 28 February – 2 March 2023, and two subsequent help desk working sessions, held in April and May 2023. These sessions introduced GBIF/OBIS and explored many tools and resources in data quality and cleaning, data publication and other important resources. New training materials, available for reuse by the community, were also created and existing resources were utilized from VertNet, GBIF's BID Programme and OBIS.
The training and help desk sessions resulted in a significant increase in the knowledge and ability of marine station and library staff and a series of GBIF/OBIS specific resources, including a single data publishing template and several quick reference guides to publication of occurrence and event data to both data-sharing platforms.
Other activities completed by project included during the first half of implementation a community survey to collect information on potential publishers, which based on the responses and level of experience of the potential workshop participants, the team made a significant change to the project’s focus that it would not create a use-case for the workshop, but instead build a use-case for use by GBIF, OBIS, and others for future trainings. The project also provided mentoring sessions on data quality and publication to workshop participants.
By the end of the project, the team had not only learned there was willingness and interest from the marine stations and library community to become participants in GBIF and OBIS, but also about the status and needs of these types of institutions. As a result, not only has the project served to create a solid set of marine-focused resources, including a marine-based use-case, it has helped to generate awareness and understanding about how Nodes within the North America region can better serve and support these specific types of institutions in future events and projects.
Post-project, it is envisaged that discussions will continue on ways to disseminate the project materials and communicate their availability to the broader community.
