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Natural History in Europeana - Accessing Scientific Collection Objects via LOD

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Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR 2016)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 672))

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Abstract

Millions of specimens housed in collections of natural history institutions document our planet’s biodiversity over centuries and represent both an indispensable knowledge base for today’s biological research as well as a cultural heritage. Digitization efforts of the past years have produced a substantial amount of digital assets: high-resolution images, videos, sound files, 3D imagery and 3D models. The OpenUp! Natural History Aggregator draws together these virtual representations of specimens from a multitude of institutions and feeds them into Europeana, the cross-domain portal for Europe’s digitized cultural heritage. Enriching their metadata with data drawn from additional resources such as common names, taxonomic literature and geographic terms helps to increase discoverability und usability. The assignment of stable uniform resource locators and the application of standard vocabularies, existing ontologies and frameworks like RDF allow effective linking of web resources from different knowledge domains, thus creating linked open data.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for the OpenUp! Natural History Aggregator was provided by the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP, grant agreement 270890) and the Connecting Europe Facility, Telecommunications sector (CEF-TC, grant agreements CEF-TC-2014-2-01 and CEF-TC-2015-1-01) of the European Commission. The development of the BioCASe Provider Software and the BioCASe protocol has been funded under grant number EVR1-2001-00003.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Berlin, Germany

    Jörg Holetschek, Gisela Baumann & Walter G. Berendsohn

  2. AIT Angewandte Informationstechnik Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Graz, Austria

    Gerda Koch

Authors
  1. Jörg Holetschek
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  2. Gisela Baumann
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  3. Gerda Koch
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  4. Walter G. Berendsohn
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jörg Holetschek .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Emmanouel Garoufallou

  2. Alexander Technological Educational Inst , Rome, Italy

    Imma Subirats Coll

  3. Sapienza University of Rome , Rome, Italy

    Armando Stellato

  4. Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    Jane Greenberg

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Holetschek, J., Baumann, G., Koch, G., Berendsohn, W.G. (2016). Natural History in Europeana - Accessing Scientific Collection Objects via LOD. In: Garoufallou, E., Subirats Coll, I., Stellato, A., Greenberg, J. (eds) Metadata and Semantics Research. MTSR 2016. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 672. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49157-8_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49157-8_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-49156-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-49157-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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