Small pieces loosely joined Building scientific web communities with Scratchpads S. Rycroft, D. Roberts, K. Harman, V. Smith

Macro scale taxonomy The big picture of taxonomic research Goal… Inventory the Earth’s species Document their relationships “Publish” these data Data set… 1.8M described species 300M pages (over last 250 years) 1.5-3B specimens People… 4-6K scientists 30-40K amateurs

Micro scale taxonomy The practice of taxonomic research Sociology… Parochial Specialized experts Fragmented & distributed Methodology… Different Communities of practice Data rich Output… Heterogeneous & scattered High volume, low impact Hard to find (use)

Integrating micro & macro taxonomy Pulling taxonomy and taxonomists together The traditional approach One size fits all Specific to developers Unsustainable Results in few users and slow adoption

Scratchpads attempt to bridge this gap

Your data 1 Published & reviewed on your site 3 Uploaded & tagged 2 What is a Scratchpad? A website for you & your community

Your data Specimens Images Literature DNA & Phylogenies Descriptions

Taxonomy backbone Classification import from uBio Classification Bank Import from tab delimited files in three different formats Makes use of a core feature of Drupal

Auto tagging Quick and easy Data available immediately after upload Works with any extra data that may be added to a taxonomy (vernacular names, synonymy)

Sucking lice (Anoplura) have around 500 species and represent the smaller of the two traditional suborders of lice. The Anoplura are all blood-feeding ectoparasites of mammals. They can cause localised skin irritations and are vectors of several blood-borne diseases. Children appear particularly susceptible to attracting lice, possibly due to their fine hair. At least three species of Anoplura are parasites of humans; the human condition of being infested with sucking lice is called pediculosis. Pediculus humanus is divided into two subspecies, Pediculus humanus humanus, or the body louse, sometimes nicknamed "the seam squirrel" for its habit of laying of eggs in the seams of clothing, and Pediculus humanus capitis, or the head louse. Phthirus pubis (the pubic louse) is the cause of the condition known as crabs

Small pieces loosely joined Has many potential meanings: Joining contributors together to form communities

Small pieces loosely joined Has many potential meanings: Joining contributors together to form communities Joining the data together that go towards forming a Scratchpad

Taxon pages Content is displayed in “Panels” on “taxon pages” Panels is a plugin feature for Drupal provided by a third party Extended with “View controls” and a “Panel creation wizard”

Default Panels

Small pieces loosely joined Has many potential meanings: Joining contributors together to form communities Joining the data together that go towards forming a Scratchpad Joining Scratchpad content with the landscape of biodiversity informatics data on the web

TapirLink provides specimens to GBIF based on Darwincore

Common Drupal base means LifeDesk modules will work with Scratchpads

Working with colleagues in Berlin, we’ll also be providing data to the EDIT CDM

Questions?