"The aim of this project was to identify biological collections managed by CSIRO that are potentially of significance to the broader research community and to enhance the visibility of those collections. From an audit of collections managed by CSIRO, approximately 40 biological collections were identified. Contact was made with the relevant Collection Managers from a range of CSIRO Business Units include Ecosystem Sciences (CES), Land and Water (CLW), Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE), Plant Industry (CPI), Livestock Industries (CLI), Food and Nutritional Science (CFNS) and Marine and Atmospheric Research (CMAR).

Through the survey process, high level information has been gathered so that internally CSIRO has more information readily available about those collections including plans for future enhancements and common issues that should be addressed from an enterprise level. The records published on Research Data Australia for the broader research community has also increased the level of discoverability of those collections. Where possible, the records linked to further search options such as Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Australian Virtual Herbarium to enable object level discovery of items within the collections.

Another aspect of this project was to seek the integration of a number of open source tools into a platform that supported the management of physical biological specimens. This project focused on the Specify 6 tool which holds metadata about the physical object and various preparations of the object, including links to digital images held in external repositories. Specify also allows the Collection Manager to describe specimens using a profile of Darwin Core metadata. Darwin Core is used for the export of object level metadata for sharing via Atlas of Living Australia. The aim of this project was to identify potential candidate collections for implementing an instance of Specify 6. This would provide a use-case for investigating the potential of Specify as an enterprise-wide tool for managing biological collections.
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physical insect/fish/plant specimen

Features: Specify6: holds metadata about the physical object and various preparations of the object, including links to digital images held in external repositories; allows the collection manager to describe specimens using a profile of Darwin Core Metadata.;
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