Tropicos Images now available through OAI-PMH

Missouri Botanical Garden is pleased to announce that our specimen and plant images are now under preservation management using the Fedora Commons repository software, and are available for harvesting using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). To access the Tropicos Images OAI provider, use the following:

http://fedora.mobot.org:8180/fedora/oai?verb=Identify
http://fedora.mobot.org:8180/fedora/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc

Added MBG Specimen Distribution Map

Last night, we added an "MBG Specimen Distribution Map" link to the home page, which shows the distribution of Specimens stored in our database. We used Google Charts (http://code.google.com/apis/chart/), specifically the "Map" chart type. Below the map, we show the counts by country, as well.

New features added

New Features were released today to improve functionality. They include:

• Added new tab to Name for literature-based distribution
• Example for Poa annua L.
  
• Enhanced image search to show results with thumbnails (can toggle between thumbnails and previous detail view)
• Go to Images search and select Rosaceae in Family dropdown.
  
• Added country dropdown for Name->Specimens and Name->Distribution
• Example for Zea mays L.
  
• Added link to “Project” page to “More” menu. Contains links to project portal pages (e.g. IPCN page)

Launch of www.tropicos.org

After months of work by a core team of scientists and developers lead by Bob Magill and Jay Paige, the new release of the Tropicos web site has been published at www.tropicos.org. To submit questions or report an issue on the new site, please use the Feedback form.

Release candidate available

A candidate for the Tropicos portal upgrade has been released at http://test.tropicos.org/.

The release includes the following features:

• Improved paging controls on search results, displaying options at top and bottom of list.
  
• Enhanced interface for viewing and exporting specimens for a given name, such as specimens of Poa annua L.
  
• Revised interface for viewing Subordinate Taxa.

Tropicos development can be tracked online through Missouri Botanical Garden's issue tracking application, available at:
http://www.mobot.org/gemini/Issues.aspx?pi=4&m=1

Submit feedback to http://test.tropicos.org/Feedback.aspx.