1. MorphBank’s Approach to Determination Annotations Austin Mast | David Gaitros | Fredrik Ronquist | Peter Jörgensen | Corinne Jörgensen | Greg Riccardi

2. Outline Acknowledgements The Motivation The System –A Collaborative Environment –Creating Collections –Creating Annotations The User Trials Future Directions

3. Acknowledgments PIs –Fredrik Ronquist (Department of Biological Science, School of Computational Science) –Greg Riccardi (College of Information) –Austin Mast (Department of Biological Science) –Greg Erickson (Department of Biological Science) –Robert van Engelen (School of Computational Science) –Corinne Jörgensen (College of Information) –Peter Jörgensen (College of Information) Research Associates –Andrew Deans (School of Computational Science) –Gordan Erlebacher (School of Computational Science) –Katja Seltmann (School of Computational Science)

4. Acknowledgments Development Team –David A. Gaitros, Project Director –Wilfredo Blanco, Lead Analyst/Graphics –Neelima Jammigumpula, Lead Analyst/Database –Karolina Maneva-Jakimoska, Analyst/Java Dev. –Steve Winner, Information Technology/Web Dev. –Gabriel Logan, Analyst/Web Services –Debbie Paul, Functional Analyst –Stan Ustymenko, Graduate Assistant –Wei Zhang, Graduate Assistant –Ken Moriuchi, Graduate Assistant –Cynthia Gaitros, Technical Writer

5. Acknowledgments Sponsors

6. Outline Acknowledgements The Motivation The System –A Collaborative Environment –Creating Collections –Creating Annotations The User Trials Future Directions

7. The Motivation Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language.

8. The Motivation Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language. Describing patterns in nature often requires a specialized vocabulary that might form a barrier to communication even among colleagues in the same Biology Department.

9. The Motivation

10. Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language. Describing patterns in nature often requires a specialized vocabulary that might form a barrier to communication even among colleagues in the same Biology Department. Pictures often have greater information content than the words that we use to describe them (or the database we’ve designed to describe them).

11. The Motivation

12. Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language. Describing patterns in nature often requires a specialized vocabulary that might form a barrier to communication even among colleagues in the same Biology Department. Pictures often have greater information content than the words that we use to describe them (or the database we’ve designed to describe them). Capturing images digitally permits mathematical abstraction and comparison of the patterns.

13. The Motivation Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language. Describing patterns in nature often requires a specialized vocabulary that might form a barrier to communication even among colleagues in the same Biology Department. Pictures often have greater information content than the words that we use to describe them (or the database we’ve designed to describe them). Capturing images digitally permits mathematical abstraction and comparison of the patterns. Capturing images digitally allows comparisons of objects that would perhaps not be otherwise compared.

14. The Motivation

15. Humans have interpreted images for far longer than we have interpreted vocabulary-rich language. Describing patterns in nature often requires a specialized vocabulary that might form a barrier to communication even among colleagues in the same Biology Department. Pictures often have greater information content than the words that we use to describe them. Capturing images digitally permits mathematical abstraction and comparison of the patterns. Capturing images digitally allows comparisons of objects that would perhaps not be otherwise compared. Often we base our conclusions on many more images than make it into print.

16. The Motivation And, when properly backed up, morphological information from specimens can be preserved in images through regional disasters that destroy the physical specimens.

17. Outline Acknowledgements The Motivation The System –A Collaborative Environment –Creating Collections –Creating Annotations The User Trials Future Directions

18. The System (version 2.5)

20. The System: Collaboration

21. Working Data Set Under Review Max. time under review: 5 years. Released

22. The System: Create Collection

28. (not actual mouse-over for this specimen)

29. The System: Create Collection

35. The System: Create Annotation

48. Outline Acknowledgements The Motivation The System –A Collaborative Environment –Creating Collections –Creating Annotations The User Trials Future Directions

49. User Trials Ongoing trials –How can current functionality be better implemented? –What new functionality would improve the workflow? –Can images be successfully used for this task? Two groups –Remote participants (variety of genera) –Visiting participants (Carex)

50. Outline Acknowledgements The Motivation The System –A Collaborative Environment –Creating Collections –Creating Annotations The User Trials Future Directions

51. Communication of determination annotations to collection holding specimen (or rather, collection’s specimen db).

52. Future Directions Communication of determination annotations to collection holding specimen (or rather, collection’s specimen db). Expand types of objects that can be included/represented in collections.

53. Future Directions Communication of determination annotations to collection holding specimen (or rather, collection’s specimen db). Expand types of objects that can be included/represented in collections. Report generation of specimen images (and other resources) examined.

54. Future Directions Communication of determination annotations to collection holding specimen (or rather, collection’s specimen db). Expand types of objects that can be included/represented in collections. Report generation of specimen images (and other resources) examined. Tools for comparing specimen-based taxonomic concepts of users.