Community Curation at Carolyn J. Lawrence, MaizeGDB Biological Analyst Trent E. Seigfried, MaizeGDB Database Manager Mary Polacco, USDA-ARS Collaborator

Overview Why use community curators? Anticipated problems and how we’re addressing them. Quality controls built into the process and into the tools themselves. Demo or screenshots.

Why use community curators? Our team consists of only four full-time members. The maize community is a tight-knit group of researchers who go out of their way to work together (i.e., community curation COULD work with this group).

What are potential problems with community curation? Getting the community of maize geneticists involved Only data entered by community members is maintained: some good data could go by the wayside Creating new versions of a record already in existence Using non-standardized nomenclature Lots of other problems…

Getting the community of maize geneticists involved Lobby for journals to require that maize data be entered into MaizeGDB. (E.g., sequence data goes into GenBank… This may not work…) Ask each lab to assign curation as a task just like pouring plates weekly or keeping a supply of buffers available. Engage undergraduate programs (Truman S). Offer hybrid workshops on how to use the site and how to become a curator. Give incentives: this is a community service that can go on a graduate student’s resume!

Only data entered by community members is maintained: some good data could go by the wayside! This is not necessarily a bad thing! Areas lacking content can be more carefully curated by MaizeGDB staff. If the community finds that data is lacking in some particular area, we will ask the researchers to nominate an individual to make those data become available.

Creating new copies of a record already in existence, using non-standard, nomenclature, etc. Community curation accounts only allow creation of new records and editing capabilites for records created by that particular curator. Certain fields are drop-down menus so the nomenclature is enforced. Community records must be made active by a MaizeGDB master curator. This ensures that the record’s quality is checked by a pro! Go to the handout outlining data quality.

What does it look like?

Demo!

Where are we on this now? Community testing… Our national steering committee and an appointed editorial board have been asked to use the tools to enter some references into the database and to give us feedback on: 1. Do you think community members could use the tools? 2. Do you think they WOULD use the tools? 3. How should we market the tools? 4. Report any unexpected behavior (bugs). Are your databases making stand-alone “powertools” that interact with the database for off-site curators or are you using web-based tools only?

PLEASE let us know your suggestions!

Team Members Carolyn J. Lawrence, MaizeGDB Biological Analyst Trent E. Seigfried, MaizeGDB Database Manager Mary Polacco, USDA-ARS Collaborator Darwin Campbell, Database Developer Full Time Volker Brendel, Primary Investigator Funding USDA-ARS specific cooperative agreement Sanford Baran, Contract Web Developer Mike Brekke, Systems Administrator Qunfeng Dong, PlantGDB Manager Part Time

MaizeGDB site: Curation site: