User:MargaretRDonald/sandbox/Bloodhound Tracker

Bloodhound Tracker is a tool which permits the name strings of collectors, and of those who determine specimen data, to be assigned to the unique person who collected or identified the specimen. If the person is living, this is done via their ORCID id (https://orcid.org), and if dead, via their wikidata (unique) id. The specimen data used is the aggregated GBIF collection.

This mechanism of contributing to specimen data arose from a project initiated by the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN)  in March 2019, and is motivated (in part) by "the world-wide importance of natural history collections, (which) are at risk because they are critically underfunded or undervalued. A contributing factor for this apparent neglect is the lack of a professional reward system that quantifies and illustrates the breadth and depth of expertise required to collect and identify specimens, maintain them, digitize their labels, mobilize the data, and enhance these data as errors and omissions are identified by stakeholders." It is also motivated by the fact that the important work of taxonomists in identifying specimens in collections across the world is currently unrecognised, in ways which help either institutions or taxonomists.

How to contribute
To attribute collection/identification data in Bloodhound Tracker and to see the profile data of collectors/identifiers, a person needs to be logged on to the Bloodhound Tracker site via an ORCID id (preferably public).

Collector profiles are by default private, which means that the profile of any living person who has contributed to specimen data aggregated by GBIF cannot be seen until the particular collector/identifier makes their profile public. A private profile means that a collector's data is neither visible nor verifiable by others.

Examples
For example, Kevin Thiele's profile on Bloodhound tracker shows that  he has determined (identified) some 11,291 from at least 12 countries, collected some 4,797 specimens collected from at least 4 countries, and that 21 of these specimens (identified or collected) have been used in 10 published papers, and that as of June 5, 2020, there remain a further 6% of specimens which may or may not have been collected or identified by him. Pressing on the tab "Specialities" shows that he has collected 542 Myrtaceae specimens and 459 Poaceae specimens, while identifying 3829 Dilleniaceae and 2916 Rhamnaceae specimens. The tab "Deposited At" reveals that the specimens he has collected are spread across 22 institutions.

Mary Ann McHard, a Western Australia n, who collected for Ferdinand von Mueller (whose proflile is also public) is seen to have collected at least 2072 extant specimens, and these still contributeto scientific knowledge with 12 of her specimens contributing to a scientific paper.

Hermann Beckler, who collected in Australia between 1856 and 1862, has 3179 extant specimens collected by him, some incorrectly said (in GBIF) to have been collected in the US. (And this illustrates the power of this project/website in that transcription and interpretation errors made in databasing specimens can be found and corrected.) Eight of his specimens have been used in four scientific publications.

"In March 2019, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN) launched the datapoc.mnhn.fr project, funded by the French research infrastructures CollEX-Persée and E-recolnat. This proof of concept was imagined and is supported by a group of partners coming from different communities working at the Muséum (specimen collection curators, librarians, researchers, data scientists, publishers). The initial motivation of this team for getting together was to imagine a way to link the massive data produced and preserved in the heterogeneous institutional collection databases and repositories of the Muséum in order to improve global access and visibility for the benefit of end-users as well as data curation processes."
 * Bloodhound Tracker: Getting st arted
 * Bloodhound Ttacker: Rationale
 * Bloodhound Tracker: Website
 * ST08 - More than Names : Identifying and Crediting People in Biodiversity Data

"'Through the Bloodhound proof-of-concept, https://bloodhound-tracker.net an international audience of collectors and determiners of natural history specimens are engaged in the emotive act of claiming their specimens and attributing other specimens to living and deceased mentors and colleagues. Behind the scenes, these claims build links between Open Researcher and Contributor Identifiers (ORCID, https://orcid.org) or Wikidata identifiers for people and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) specimen identifiers, predicated by the Darwin Core terms, recordedBy (collected) and identifiedBy (determined). Here we additionally describe the socio-technical challenge in unequivocally resolving people names in legacy specimen data and propose lightweight and reusable solutions. The unique identifiers for the affiliations of active researchers are obtained from ORCID whereas the unique identifiers for institutions where specimens are actively curated are resolved through Wikidata. By constructing closed loops of links between person, specimen, and institution, an interesting suite of potential metrics emerges, all due to the activities of employees and their network of professional relationships. This approach balances a desire for individuals to receive formal recognition for their efforts in natural history collections with that of an institutional-level need to alter budgets in response to easily obtained numeric trends in national and international reach.'"

"'We want to identify people for many reasons. Cross-validation of information about a specimen with biographical information on the specimen can be used to clean data. Mapping specimens from individual collectors across multiple herbaria can geolocate specimens accurately. By linking literature to specimens through their authors and collectors we can create collaboration networks leading to a much better understanding of the scientific contribution of collectors and their institutions. For taxonomists, it will be easier to identify nomenclatural type and syntype material, essential for reliable typification. Overall, it will mean that geographically dispersed specimens can be treated much more like a single distributed infrastructure of specimens as is envisaged in the European Distributed Systems of Scientific Collections Infrastructure (DiSSCo).'"

DISSCo

 * DISSCo: Distributed System of Scientific Collections 21 countries, 120 participating institutions