Academic literature on the topic 'Database of the digitized maps collections'

By the establishment of the Greenland Botanical Survey in 1962 at the Botanical Museum, University of Copenhagen, an era of regular and systematic exploration of the vascular plant flora of Greenland was initiated and it ended in 1996, when funding ended. Preceding this period, the vascular plant flora was mainly known from the results of more sporadic botanical investigations mostly in low arctic West and East Greenland, but after the 1980s, investigations expanded to include the more inaccessible high arctic Northeast and North Greenland. Nowadays, vascular plant species have been collected from most regions of Greenland. So far, three regional phytogeographical studies of South, North, and West Greenland have been published, and at present, two papers dealing with the vascular plant flora of East Greenland are ready for publication. These studies will be the basis for a synopsis of the phytogeography of Greenland and a new edition of the Flora of Greenland. The published distribution maps from South, West, and North Greenland based on these collections have been digitized and used for modelling the regional vegetation and flora and its relation to past glaciations and current climate. The specimens from East Greenland have been entered into a database and will be available for future modelling projects.

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Historical maps consist an important source of information and a research tool for several researchers of various scientific fields, especially the humanities (Michev 2016), who are working on the geographic analysis of the environment. For them, the digital comparative analysis of historical and modern maps offers a variety of benefits. It expands the scope of their research, providing them the opportunity to study the geometric and thematic properties of the maps, or they use maps constructed on different periods to detect and determine changes in the physical environment, border changes, or changes on the toponyms (e.g. Boutoura &amp; Livieratos, 1986, 2006; Livieratos, 2006; Tsorlini et al, 2010). This is really essential, especially when these changes are only apparent through maps and no other written source exists (Tsorlini et al, 2017).</p><p>Historical maps in different forms, independent or embedded in books, atlases or map series, are located in map collections mainly in libraries worldwide. These cartographic materials abroad are stored in specific departments in the libraries, where specialized personnel deals with them and is responsible for their management, preservation and demonstration to the public. This is not the case for our country, since many historical maps and other related cartographic material in libraries, remain almost unknown to researchers and generally to the public. Sometimes, there are difficulties even to detect historical maps in the library’s system, because they are documented and recorded following specific rules related mainly to traditional descriptive methods applied in book-keeping and book-archiving (Boutoura, 2014). As a consequence, there are important maps, who haven’t been studied or analysed until today and their important value has not been exploited yet in library’s environment.</p><p>One of the most important libraries in Greece and the second in size after the National Library, is the Library and Information Centre of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH Library). The cartographic material located in AUTH Library has not been documented and studied properly in all its size and the cartographic wealth has not been exploited in Library’s environment, until its cooperation with the Laboratory of Cartography and Geographical Analysis which was realized recently. In the frame of this cooperation, a research project was developed focusing on one of the AUTH Library’s collections, the very important Ioannis Tricoglou Library, with the aim to collect, document and organize the cartographic material found in this collection, in an information system, which will give the opportunity to researchers and to the general public to search for maps, independent or embedded in books, and to find relevant information for them through an easy and user-friendly digital environment. In this way, historical maps and other cartographic material located in Library’s collections will be demonstrated to researchers and the general public, presenting and promoting also the cartographic wealth of the library.</p><p>The main stages of this project are: a) the collection and documentation of the maps found in Ioannis Tricoglou Library, b)the proper transformation of these data to provide information through a database, c) the connection of the maps in thedatabase with other related textual and pictorial sources, in order to enrich the information provided for the maps not onlyfor researchers and students, but also for the library’s staff, simplifying in this way the searching procedure and finally(Tsorlini et al, 2018a), and finally, d) the development of a user-friendly digital environment, which will provide accessto historical maps and relevant cartographic material located in Ioannis Tricoglou Library. Emphasis on this project isgiven to the maps which were found inside the books, since they were not recorded and documented correctly, they werenot digitized in the proper way, thus it was impossible to detect them through the existing library’s system (Tsorlini et al,2018b).</p><p>In this paper, we will analyse shortly the main stages of the project and we will discuss the problems appeared during the whole procedure. Moreover, we will present its results, which can assist to the improvement of the library’s searching system and to the demonstration of the unknown cartographic wealth of the library to the academic community and general public.</p>

Elmer Ottis Wooton (1865–1945) was one of the most important early botanists to work in the Southwestern United States, contributing a great deal of natural history knowledge and botanical research on the flora of New Mexico that shaped many naturalists and scientists for generations. The extensive Wooton legacy includes herbarium collections that he and his famous student Paul Carpenter Standley (1884–1963), prolific botanist and explorer, used for the first Flora of New Mexico by Wooten and Standley 1915 , along with resources covering botany and range management strategies for the northern Chihuahuan Desert, and an extensive, yet to be digitized, historical archive of correspondence, field notes, vegetation sketches, photographs, and lantern slides, all from his travels and field work in the region. Starting in 1890, the most complete set of Wooton’s herbarium collections were deposited in the NMC herbarium at New Mexico State University (NMSU), and his archives, now stored in a Campus library, have together been underutilized, offline resources. The goals of this ongoing project are to secure, preserve, and promote Wooton’s important historical resources, by fleshing out the botanical history of the region, raising appreciation of herbarium collections within the community, and emphasizing their unique role in facilitating contemporary research aimed at addressing pressing scientific questions such as vegetation responses to global climate change. Students and the general public involved in this project are engaged through hands-on activities including cataloging, databasing and digitization of nearly 10,000 herbarium specimens and Wooton’s archives. These outputs, combined with contemporary data collection and computational biology techniques from an ecological perspective, are being used to document vegetation changes in iconic, climate-sensitive, high-elevation mountainous ecosystems present in southwestern New Mexico. In a later phase of the project, a variety of public audiences will participate through interactive online story maps and citizen science programs such as iNaturalist, Notes from Nature, and BioBlitz. Images of herbarium specimens will be shared via an online database and other relevant biodiversity portals (Symbiota, iDigBio, JStor) Community members reached through this project will be better-informed citizens, who may go on to become new stewards of natural history collections, with the potential to influence policies safeguarding the future of our planet’s biodiversity. More locally, the project will support the management of Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, which was established in 2014 to protect the area's human and environmental resources, and for which knowledge and data are currently limited.

Russia holds massive biodiversity data accumulated in botanical and zoological collections, literature publications, annual reports of natural reserves, nature conservation, and monitoring study project reports. While some data have been digitized and organized in databases or spreadsheets, most of the biodiversity data in Russia remain dormant and digitally inaccessible. Concepts of open access to research data is spreading, and the lack of data publishing tradition and of use of data standards remain prominent. A national biodiversity information system is lacking and most of the biodiversity data are not available or the available data are not consolidated. As a result, Russian biodiversity data remain fragmented and inaccessible for researchers. The majority of Russian biodiversity databases do not have web interfaces and are accessible only to a limited numbers of researchers. The main reason for lack of access to these resources relates to the fact that the databases have previously been developed only as a local resource. In addition, many sources have previously been developed in the desktop database environments mainly using MS Access and, in some cases, earlier DBMS for DOS, i.e., file-server system, which does not have the functionality to create access to records through a web interface. Among the databases with a web interface, a few information systems have interactive maps with the species occurrence data and systems allowing registered users to upload data. It is important to note that the conceptual structures of these databases were created without taking into account modern standards of the Darwin Core; furthermore, some data sources were developed prior to the first work version of the Darwin Core release in 2001. Despite the complexity and size of the biodiversity data landscape in Russia, the interest in publishing data through international biodiversity portals is increasing among Russian researchers. Since 2014, institutional data publishers in Russia have published about 140 000 species occurrences through gbif.org. The increase in data publishing activity calls for the creation of a GBIF node in Russia, aiming to support Russian biodiversity experts in international data work.

Spatial analysis can bring out crucial issues in the political ecology of pastoral areas, with important implications for planning future development. This research combines textual analysis, participatory mapping, ethnography, and remote sensing data to study resource use and common property among pastoralists in Central Tibet. Specifically, this paper presents a case study of pasture boundaries over time in the Porong region (Nyelam County, Shigatse Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, PRC). Translation and analysis of an historical (1884) boundary survey from Porong yielded hundreds of toponyms, boundary markers, livestock corrals, and resource locations, which were catalogued and indexed in a geographical database. Toponyms and landscape features listed in the boundary survey were geo-referenced using a Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) unit: fieldwork in Tibet resulted in the collection of over five hundred GPS points that marked historical and contemporary pasture boundaries. In addition, participatory maps of pastures were generated with local herders and subsequently digitized using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. These compiled GIS maps provide a time series of common property boundaries and illustrate how changes in Tibet’s governance (feudalism vs. socialism) and type of economy (e.g., collectivized vs. private household production) did or did not impact the distribution of resources among pastoralists. Analysis of vegetation resources available within historical and contemporary common property units provides compelling evidence that boundaries reflect the balance of power relations, resulting in unequal availability of rangeland resources. The case study adds to the literature on common property by reinserting the state’s central roles in defining boundaries, regulating resource use, and mediating resource conflicts.Key Words: participatory mapping, GIS, Central Tibet, common property resource management.

Participation within digitized collections has shown boom, but diversity of participants has remained static. Traditionally, natural history collections were only utilized by researchers with access to the physical collections. With the advent of open source digitized specimens, whether through transcription of the original label onto an electronic database, sound bites, two-dimensional photographs, or three-dimensional volume files, natural history collections are now at nearly everyone’s fingertips. Although collections have been historically clustered in the northern hemisphere, preliminary data suggest that researchers from the southern hemisphere have started using collections more via online portals. Studies have shown that a more heterogeneous community leads to an increase in the quality of science and publications. iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections), the United States’ national resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC), is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded initiative that makes millions of biological specimens, in the form of data and images, available electronically to the wider world. Our network of institutions across the world provide the digitized content that makes up our search portal. Minority serving institutions (MSIs) are an important resource for under served communities in the United States. They provide the educational and social skills required to overcome discrimination and economic disparities that these communities often face. Here, we focus on the types of institutions involved in uploading data, specifically those that identify as MSIs and the role they play in the field. After assessing MSI participation with the ADBC program by comparing databases of participants, I found that out of the nearly 400 individual institutions that contribute to the database, one-third of them identify as an MSI. The next step is further engaging contributing MSIs and identifying MSIs with natural history collections that are not a part of the iDigBio network and inviting them to join. By incorporating them into our network, we hope to reach underserved populations of students while broadening the scope of collections available. Including MSIs into our greater community of partners is not enough. We are striving to provide a greater understanding of how the iDigBio portal is used by new communities in the US with limited resources. In this way, we can provide educators with the tools necessary to better prepare their students for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers, as well as improving the collections available to the world.

In order to initiate a taxonomical revision of the Dianthus sylvestris group, an inventory of historical herbarium materials from ZA and ZAHO collections was conducted. Herbarium specimens of D. sylvestris group from these two herbaria were digitized and the data from the original herbarium labels were inserted in the Flora Croatica Database. A total of 344 herbarium sheets were digitized and six taxa (D. sylvestris Wulfen in Jacq. ssp. sylvestris, D. sylvestris ssp. tergestinus (Rchb.) Hayek, D. sylvestris ssp. longicaulis (Ten.) Greuter et Burdet, D. sylvestris ssp. nodosus (Tausch) Hayek, D. siculus C. Presl and D. arrosti C. Presl) were registered within studied collections. Inventory of herbarium sheets from ZA and ZAHO historical collections provided a significant insight into historical distributional data of D. sylvestris taxa related to the area of the Balkan Peninsula, which is a prerequisite for accurate taxonomic/ geographic sampling for further morphological and molecular analyses.

Nowadays, when you tell someone you recently visited a map library, it’s hard for them to discern whether you mean virtually or in person. The two comprehensive public universities in Nevada are building complementary digital collections of historic maps of interest to the region to enable virtual map library visits. This article briefly describes the two university library map collections, discusses the criteria that were used to select maps to be digitized, provides insight into some of the scanning issues and how they were resolved, discusses technical considerations in using CONTENTdm®, and talks about metadata issues in the collaborative effort. The conclusion provides insight into what has been learned and why the project is important as a foundation for the future.

Abstract Although the Ordnance Survey has itself been the subject of historical research, scholars have not systematically used its maps as primary sources of information. This is partly for disciplinary reasons and partly for the technical reason that high-quality maps have not until recently been available digitally, geo-referenced, and in color. A final, and crucial, addition has been the creation of item-level metadata which allows map collections to become corpora which can for the first time be interrogated en masse as source material. By applying new Computer Vision methods leveraging machine learning, we outline a research pipeline for working with thousands (rather than a handful) of maps at once, which enables new forms of historical inquiry based on spatial analysis. Our ‘patchwork method’ draws on the longstanding desire to adopt an overall or ‘complete’ view of a territory, and in so doing highlights certain parallels between the situation faced by today’s users of digitized maps, and a similar inflexion point faced by their predecessors in the nineteenth century, as the project to map the nation approached a form of completion.

The Sternberg Museum of Natural History (FHSM) has a rich paleontology history extending back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. From the 1902 to 1992, the museum was housed on the Fort Hays State University campus. FHSM outgrew the campus capacity and moved to a new location that afforded the museum significant space for collections and exhibits. Just as the museum had to change locations with its growing collections, so too must the means of care for the collections change and be updated. In order to improve the state of the paleontology collections and make them more accessible, the FHSM’s Chief Curator pursued grants to achieve these goals. Two grants later, FHSM is well on its way to a digitized paleontology collection. One National Science Foundation (NSF) grant focuses on basic collections improvement: transcription of hand-written records, cataloging the specimen backlog, and imaging specimens. One of the most important updates is the addition of the relational database, CollectiveAccess. This database enables FHSM to have a public-facing, searchable database that can show not only specimen data but also images and 3D scans of fossils. The second grant is an NSF funded Integrated Digitized Biocollection (iDigBio) collaborative research project. This grant focuses on fossils collected from the Late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway fossils. The digitization goals of the collections improvement grant work synergistically with the iDigBio grant. When preparing to start work on these two projects, workflows and how-to guides were developed to fit the needs of both grants. This synergy increased efficiency for training student workers and aided quality control. In regards to the new relational database, many considerations had to be made: what is the nature of the data, with whom are we sharing data, what are the data standards, what controls need to be in place to increase ease of use. Digitization of the collection started with transcription of hand-written records into a spreadsheet. The data from those record books and ledgers was cross referenced with the specimen cards to check for accuracy. Between the two grants, FHSM has two photography stations, four undergraduate students, and two graduate students. This small army of students, along with the Collections Manager, have succeeded in digitizing the invertebrate paleontology collection and have made significant progress on the vertebrate collection. Once the database is finalized, the images produced by these students will be uploaded and shared with aggregators such as iDigBio and accessible via the FHSM website.

Disertace je zaměřena na kartografické kulturní dědictví. Zkoumá postupy a stav jeho zpracování i způsoby a nástroje pro zpřístupnění v paměťových institucích. Byly vytčeny dva hlavní cíle práce. Nejprve zpracovat teoretický model online zpřístupnění kartografického kulturního dědictví a ověřit jej na vzorku mapových sbírek. Dále na základě teoretického modelu vytvořit online nástroj pro zlepšení služeb mapových sbírek. K dosažení cíle byly použity kvalitativní výzkumné metody. Konkrétně se jednalo o dotazníkové šetření českých a zahraničních mapových sbírek a také o případové studie českých projektů zaměřených na zpracování a zpřístupnění kartografických památek. K naplnění cílů práce byly podle knihovnického referenčního modelu IFLA navrženy dílčí modely uživatelských úloh, jejichž cílem bylo najít, určit, vybrat, získat a prozkoumat dílo. Na jejich základě byla doporučena kritéria pro hodnocení uživatelských úloh. K ověření funkčnosti modelu došlo testováním 20 digitalizovaných mapových sbírek. Byl vytvořen webový nástroj Databáze digitalizovaných mapových sbírek pro zlepšení služeb mapových sbírek.

The digitized collections and their associated metadata records are one of the most important electronic resources that require constant and ongoing management. Construction of an easy-to-use database system is a key and necessary part of this management effort. Due to the lack of a local classification scheme for a thematic collection, constructing a database system that is searchable by browsing through a layered knowledge map is challenging. In this chapter, the authors first summarize some useful theories and principles for constructing a user-friendly database system, then point out some database system goals, i.e., functions that are useful for such a database system. Finally, using the database system for video and photograph resources on Taiwan’s indigenous people as an example, they present the solutions for achieving the goals. The purpose of this case is to demonstrate how to construct an ideal database system for the electronic resources born from digitization projects.