Stephanie C. Haas

Metadata rematrixed: merging museum and library boundaries

Linking Floridas Natural History uses species information as the nexus for pulling together scientific data from museum specimen databases and library catalogs of scientific literature. The goals of the IMLS funded project were to integrate specimen records and bibliographic records about the same species; to create an interface equally easy for scientists, students and laymen to use; and to enhance bibliographic description to make it more usable in a taxonomic and environmental context. Although some development was required to enable Z39.50‐based broadcast search across bibliographic and specimen collections, the bulk of the work was devoted to identifying and overcoming inconsistencies between the resource description practices of libraries and museums. Enriching records with taxonomic and geographic information was also a challenge.

From the Air: the photographic record of Florida’s lands

Purpose – To describe an LSTA‐funded project that digitized 88,000 black and white aerial photographs and 2,500 photomosaic indexes created for Florida by the US Department of Agriculture between 1938 and 1971. Technical specifications of digital capture, specialized programming, and project value are reviewed. Design/methodology/approach – The 9 × 9 inch aerial tiles were captured on flatbed scanners; the larger photomosaic indexes were captured using a large format camera. Three software tools were designed for the project: the first tracked each tile through the entire in‐house processing including receipt, assignment, scan completion, QC processing, FTPing to server, and archiving of images. The second automated image collection, from disparate scanning stations, performed basic image manipulation for quality control, and stored collected data in a database. The third tool performed routine image corrections, prepared and deployed web format images, and packed archival image formats preparatory to bur...

Darwin and MARC: a voyage of metadata discovery

Awash with discipline driven metadata, information providers are seeking ways to bridge formats. This paper provides an overview of major schemes in vogue related to natural history, and discusses a project that enhanced MARC metadata to provide taxonomic and geospatial fields. These enhancements permit simultaneous searching of museum specimen records and scientific citations. Potential GIS applications are described.