Accessing UNA Specimen Data
Our data can be accessed from the U.S. Node to GBIF set up by the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) at
(While it is also possible to search our data from the GBIF home page at http:\\www.gbif.org using Search or Browse, these searches are not updated right away. The advanced search on the NBII site is updated immediately when our data changes.)
On the NBII site under "Global Biodiversity Information Facility " click Search DiGIR .
Instructions for "How to build a search query using the DiGIR data portal" are displayed.
At the bottom of the page, click the link:
Search the
GBIF Network using the DiGIR Portal
(If you get a message “status -4” on a blank screen the NBII server is down. Contact me, sginzbar [at] biology [dot] as [dot] ua [dot] edu. I will search our local database and send you the information you need.)
Click Build Query.
Under
"Select Data Providers" select "
Some search tips:
To
find all specimens of Panicum ravenelii
at
UNA:
1)
Choose "Genus" from the "Select a Concept" box.
2)
Choose "equals" from the "Select a Comparator" box.
3)
Type "Panicum" in the third box.
4)
Click "Add another condition"
5)
Choose "and" from the "Select an Operator" box.
6)
Choose "Species"
from the "Select a Concept" box.
7)
Choose "equals" from the "Select a Comparator" box.
8)
Type "ravenelii" in the third box.
(A shortcut
would be to:
1)
Choose "ScientificName" from the
"Select a Concept" box.
2)
Choose "like" from the "Select a Comparator" box. (Our ScientificName includes authors, otherwise you could have
chosen
"equals".)
3)
Type "Panicum ravenelii"
in the third box.
This
would not find records with ScientificName "Panicum cf.
ravenelii".)
To
limit the search to
9)
Click "Add another condition"
10)
Choose "and" from the "Select an Operator" box.
11)
Choose "StateProvince" from the
"Select a Concept" box.
12)
Choose "equals" from the "Select a Comparator" box.
13)
Type "
I
didn't include the country because I don't think any other country has a state
"
Under
Specify Results I prefer to choose Custom Result Set. In addition to the 5
required fields you can add other fields you would like included in the query
results.
Leave
the Record Limit (10 by default) blank to return the maximum number of records
allowed.
To
save the search results you can click "Download Tabular Results"
then Save. Give the
file a name and save it as the default type "Document" to a folder on
your hard drive (or, if you want to import it into Access, save it as type
"All Files" and add a ".txt"
extention to the file name). (The file is downloaded as tab
delimited
text.) Find and
double-click the file in Windows Explorer. In the "Open File" box
click "Open". In the "Open With" box select Microsoft
Office Excel and click OK. The "Open File" box appears again. Click
"Open". You can "Save As" a Microsoft Excel workbook
<filename>.xls
if you wish.
The
fields in current use are explained at
http://digir.sourceforge.net/schema/conceptual/darwin/2003/1.0/darwin2.xsd.
Proposed fields in a more easily readable format can be found at
http://darwincore.calacademy.org/.
Elevation is in meters. CoordinatePrecision is the
radius in meters. We use three levels:
1138 -
within a half mile radius
11380
- within a 5 mi radius
32187
- within the county
You can get help from NBII in
setting up your collection to
provide data to GBIF. Contact
Technical
Project Coordinator
National
Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) USGS Biological Informatics
Program
Phone:
703-648-4360
Fax: 703-648-4224
john [at] usgs.gov
NBII
offers workshops and provides support for getting set up.
I
didn't attend a workshop. With the help of someone from our computer center and
NBII's technical support I was able to get through
it.
You don't need a server, just a computer with a port that is not blocked by a firewall.