There has been some recent discussion on associating the geographical coordinate of a collection or museum. If you are interested in updating your information in the Biodiversity Collection Index and not sure how to go about finding your coordinate you can follow this simple tutorial to get your location without any GPS device. (more…)
Ever wanted to know where all the historical plants are stored? How about bugs, insects, spiders, butterflies, or fish? Well with the help of Biodiversity Collection Index (BCI) and their wonderful resources of information we are finally able to get a true interactive visualization of how our world is collected and where that information is housed.
Visit the Interactive Map (http://labs.silverbiology.com/biocol)
Research into biodiversity relies on the use of specimens. These specimens are held in reference collections around the world. BCI is a central index to these collections. With the help of BCI’s Web Services, SilverBiology was able to use its new open source web tool SilverMapper to easily map the location of these collections.
This data source is directly based on the data from the Biodiversity Collection Index (BCI) and all geospatial data is estimated on Google Maps reverse geocoding service to establish a latitude and longitude.
We wanted to show a real world example of our new program SilverMapper and at the same time provide something useful for the community. Comments and suggestions are welcome. I would also like to thank Roger Hyam for all his hard work over at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh for really bringing the Biodiversity Collection Index together. I hope this little demonstration will encourage collection managers to update their information with the exact latitude and longitude position at BCI to help provide the precise location of where people can find their collection.
