April 30, 2000

Institute of Museum & Library Services
Office of Library Services
Program Officer, National Leadership Awards
1100 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Rm 802
Washington, DC 20506

RE: Interim Report

This third interim report covering October 1999 through March 2000 is submitted in compliance with grant number LL-80016-98, "Linking Florida's Natural Heritage". This report is organized according to the five goals stated in the proposal, all of which relate to building the Natural Heritage digital library.
 

Goal 1: Mapping common to scientific names to enhance searchability of Museum collections

An updated common name to scientific name matrix was completed and sent to FCLA. More than 9,920 names have been mapped for freshwater and saltwater mollusks and fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, butterflies and mammals. 2,556 vascular plant names have been included. An online thesaurus version of this matrix may be found at http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/matrix/T/index.html.

Authorities consulted in the construction of this crosswalk may be found at: http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/authority.html.
 

Goal 2: Creation of a Florida Ecosystem/Species Thesaurus

Drafts of the ecology thesaurus (http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/thesauri/feol2/index.htm) and the natural communities (http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/thesauri/fnc/index.htm) terms have been completed. The ecosystem/species thesaurus consists of approximately 3500 terms under 12 major subject categories.

The Florida's Natural Communities Thesaurus is a separate file developed by biologist Tina Ugarte with funding from Florida Atlantic University's Center for Environmental Studies (CES). The terms and relationships used in this thesaurus are derived from several authority lists, including: 1) Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI), 2) Florida DOT's Florida Land Use, Cover and Forms Classification System, January 1999 edition, and 3) Federal Wetlands Classification. The FEOL Thesaurus (see Goal 4) and the Florida's Natural Communities Thesaurus will soon be merged into one thesaurus.

Work continues on harmonizing disparate sources of vocabulary; removing duplicate terms; adding and subtracting terms; establishing synononymies and other relationships among terms; and declaring preferred terms.

In March 2000, the FEOL Thesaurus team began coordinating efforts withother Florida agencies involved in developing a list of keywords for use in describing, searching and retrieving datasets covering Florida natural science. The cooperating agencies include: Florida Geographic Board; Florida Department of Environmental Protection; South Florida Water Management District; Florida Marine Research Institute; USGS; and others. Analysis of the agencies' keyword lists showed a significant overlap with the draft FEOL thesaurus. Efforts will continue to ensure that the vocabulary reflected in the FEOL Thesaurus is useful to agencies, libraries and information providers across Florida.
 

Goal 3: Selection, Digitization, and Indexing of a "Core" Collection of Florida Ecosystem/Species Texts

Text Selection
 
The listing is complete for each category of material and may be found at http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/selection.html.

Permission to digitize texts have been solicited and obtained from a variety of copyright owners (see the following URL for list of all permissions: http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/digit/track.html).

The listing of texts recommended, permissions granted, and digitization progress may be found at http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh/digit/track.html.

Digitization and Uploading

As of the end of March, student technicians hired by Erich Kesse (UF) have digitized the 200 texts that are part of the IMSL grant. Clean up of the digitization of texts is now underway. The creation of metadata, jpegs, copyright/digitization permission statements is also in process. Files are being burned to CD ROM and sent to FCLA for pdf creation and uploading to the Web.
 

Goal 4: Creation of the Florida Environments Online Database

The Florida Environments Online database (FEOL) was established on the Web at:
http://fc1n05e.fcla.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/fclwlv3/wlv3/DGref/DBQC/CM2/P1basic

Record conversion for the following databases has occurred, as of March 2000:

Florida Botany (268 records)
Florida Geology (1061 records)
Florida Ornithology (130 records for 1985, 1987)
Florida Ecosystems (1657 records)
Florida Fish (867 records)
Florida Freshwater database (914 records)
Florida Herpetology (413 records)
Florida Agricultural History (2465 records)
Web site records (70)

On January 27-28, 2000, Mary Ann O’Daniel and Stephanie Haas taught a two day workshop on inputting records into the FEOL database. Participants from NOAA, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Department of Plant Industry, Florida Marine Research Institute, and the Florida Center for Solid & Hazardous Waste received passwords to enable them to input records into the database.
 

Goal 5: Computer Integration with Z39.50: Electronic gateway to museum and library information services

Because of difficulties posed by Blue Angel software’s inability to search remote data, Dr. Shuching Chung developed a single interface using Z39.50, an ANSI/NISO standard client/server protocol for search and retrieval, to search both bibliographic and museum databases. OCLC's WebZ software, part of the SiteSearch software suite, is used as the Z39.50 client. WebZ is configured to allow a user to search a single LFNH database, all databases simultaneously, or any combination of databases. The interface is not yet stable, but can be viewed at http://susdl.fcla.edu/lfnh. At this point, access to two specimen databases: herpetology and ichthyology, and six bibliographic databases: Everglades Online, Florida Environments Online, FORMIS Ant Bibliography, LFNH Core Collection, Sea Turtle Bibliography, and the 13 Florida State University Library Catalogs is being tested. Retrieval of plant and bryophyte records from Camp Blanding, and bird records from the Tall Timbers Research Station are also under testing.

The WebZ client accesses two Z39.50 servers written by FCLA as part of this project using the Z39.50-1995 toolkit by Index Data. One server is designed to handle the bibliographic data in library files and one handles the SQL data in museum specimen databases. For retrievals from museum files, SQL table columns are mapped to MARC-like fields and returned as MARC records. The Z39.50 client and server use the bib-1 attribute set enhanced with non-conflicting local use attributes for museum data elements. For example, genus is given a use attribute of 8002, species is use attribute 8003, and collector is use attribute 8005.

In addition to the individual goal progress discussion above, other developments are worthy of mention.

Under the supervision of Professor Martha Monroe, Jeanette Randall, a graduate student in Forestry, is developing a set of 5 lessons focusing on Biodiversity to support and use the database for 9th and 10th grade biology and environmental science students.  Each lesson will have a writing component tied to the Florida standards for both science and language.

Topics include:

  1. Museums, Libraries, and Scientists
  2. Taxonomic Naming Protocols
  3. Exotic vs. Native Species
  4. Biodiversity
  5. Natural Resource Consumption.
Each lesson consists of 1) Web-base interactive background information for the students; 2) An activity based on each topic that uses the database; and 3) An FCAT writing prompt that directs them to write on the topic. FCAT stands for Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and is a set of skills tests given at various times in K-12 education. There will also be a lesson on writing, editing, and revising. This lesson will help them understand how the FCAT scoring works.

Jeanette presented information on the project at the LEEF (League of Environmental Educators of Flordia) in late March. Atendees included teachers and RSP representatives (Florida Regional Servce projects for environmental education). Several teachers were interested in helping with various stages of the project.

Discussion continues with the Biological Research Division of the U.S.G.S. on a new report format in their Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) that will contain taxonomic information formatted to the specifications of the MARC cataloging field 754.  In March, Stephanie Haas met with Janet Goman and Michael Ruggiero, ITIS, Smithsonian Institution Biodiversity Programs, to further discuss the possibilities.  Because this field has never been used, approval by the MARC standards committee is being sought before the field structure is finalized.

Mark Hinnebusch from FCLA is planning to attend the Z39.50 Biological Information Group (ZBIG) meeting in April. This group was instrumental in developing "Species Analyst" an NSF funded project concerned with accessing, compiling, and serving data from disparate museum specimen records. The Darwin Core searching elements and Z39.50 attributes from that project have been used in Linking Florida’s Natural Heritage to help delineate the information returned in searches.

Jim Corey, Priscilla Caplan, and Stephanie Haas attended the IMLS Web-wise conference in Washington in March. Stephanie presented the prototype site for "Linking Florida’s Natural Heritage" and Priscilla discussed "Opportunities and Challenges for Standards Development." The interest generated in LFNH has lead to a continuing dialog among specimen curators and librarians. On May 10-11th, "Z39.50 in Museums: a workshop for Florida’s collections" will be held at FCLA. Sponsored by the Florida Center for Library Automation, the Florida Museum of Natural History, and the Marston Science Library, University of Florida, the workshop will explain the potential of Z39.50 collaborative projects and provide guidelines for how to participate in the Florida project.  Participants and/or presenters will include interested individuals from the IMLS Web-wise meeting.
 

Sincerely,

James F. Corey Principal Investigator