by Jorrit H. Poelen https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3138-4118 and Jason Best https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7414-5523 and ... (you?)

2022-09-15

On Enabling Fast and Secure Access to Herbarium Specimen Images

(draft)

Abstract

Access to Natural History Collections helps researchers to better understand the natural world. Millions of digital images of herbarium specimen are openly available via the Internet. However, using these images in a research project can be cumbersome, because they are hard to access, difficult to cite, and complicated to compile into datasets. Here, we use Preston, a biodiversity data tracker, and rsync, a file-copying tool, to enable fast and secure access to hundreds of thousands of digital herbarium images from the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.

This experimental data paper describes a method to facilitate fast and secure use of Botanical Research Institute Texas (BRIT) records and associated images:

Botanical Research Institute Texas (BRIT): Origins of BRIT collection records and associated images tracked in period 2022-06/2022-07. hash://sha256/76d40abccfc71bc2cdaf4ea4a6003b9ac49123b27abe9f0d81e233299baf5e94 https://github.com/bio-guoda/preston-brit-2022 https://linker.bio/hash://sha256/76d40abccfc71bc2cdaf4ea4a6003b9ac49123b27abe9f0d81e233299baf5e94

Related datasets include, obtained via preston ls | preston cite:

SERNEC - 5d18ed85-2217-4a65-b415-d210725df572. Accessed at <zip:hash://sha256/371984ca4566b7b6bc760d0766873b469e12af2d87ce9218f1da888a1b4c3948!/eml.xml> .
SERNEC - e77c6bda-21ea-41a4-ace2-fb08bc160e03. Accessed at <zip:hash://sha256/c208c09101b39d534e2a9700d8abf43357f1c7707a6b5590aa528fe78d56cfbe!/eml.xml> .
TORCH Portal - af5fc908-bfa8-49a6-b37a-07849fe523a8. Accessed at <zip:hash://sha256/28ebbca9c3e3d092e6193f5f54f476815f4e347ff79b1bb7de07090e78a648ea!/eml.xml> .

For mre detailed description of methods/conclusions/discussion, see work-in-progress at https://www.authorea.com/users/508782/articles/586433-on-enabling-fast-and-secure-access-to-herbarium-specimen-images or their pdf snapshot at https://github.com/bio-guoda/preston-brit-2022/blob/main/Poelen-BRIT-2022.pdf .