Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Falko Glöckler (falko.gloeckler@mfn-berlin.de)
Received: 06 Apr 2018 | Published: 18 May 2018
© 2018 Falko Glöckler, Markus Englund
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Glöckler F, Englund M (2018) DINA Bits - Small Services Growing in the DINA System. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e25579. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.25579
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The DINA system (“DIgital information system for NAtural history data”, https://dina-project.net) consists of several web-based services that fulfill specific tasks. Most of the existing services are covering single core features in the collection management system and can be used either as integrated components in the DINA environment, or as stand-alone services.
In this presentation single services will be highlighted as they represent technically interesting approaches and practical solutions for daily challenges in collection management, data curation and migration workflows. The focus will be on the following topics: (1) a generic reporting and label printing service, (2) practical decisions on taxonomic references in collection data and (3) the generic management and referencing of related research data and metadata:
Reporting as presented in this context is defined as an extraction and subsequent compilation of information from the collection management system rather than just summarizing statistics. With this quite broad understanding of the term the DINA Reports & Labels Service (
Many collection management systems try to cope with taxonomic issues, because in practice taxonomy is used not only for determinations, but also for organizing the collections and categorizing storage units (e.g. “Coleoptera hall”). Addressing taxonomic challenges in a collection management system can slow down development and add complexity for the users. The DINA system uncouples these issues in a simple taxonomic service for the sole assignment of names to specimens, for example determinations. This draws a clear line between collection management and taxonomic research, of which the latter can be supported in a separate service.
While the digitization of collection data and workflows proceeds, linking related data is essential for data management and enrichment. In many institutions research data is disconnected from the collection specimen data because the type and structure cannot be easily included in the collection management databases. With the DINA Generic Data Module (
label printing, reports, taxonomic references, collection management, research data management
Falko Glöckler & Markus Englund
Additional contributions:
Corrections and edits: Mikko Heikkinen
Developers: Thomas Pfuhl (Generic Data Module), Mikko Heikkinen & Anton Öberg (Taxonomy Service), Falko Glöckler (Reports & Labels Service)
Linguistic edits: James A Macklin, Glen Newton