Data Ingestion Guidance

Guidance When First Considering iDigBio Data Ingestion

Contact Info

For assistance, contact data@idigbio.org

Below are a few things that we ask of the data to make it fit for use in the cyberinfrastructure we are building:

Data Requirements

3 kinds of data submitted:

1. specimen data,
2. media related to and attached by reference to specimen records,
3. media files

For all specimen data

• each specimen record needs to have a unique identifier (within the dataset) identifier in the occurrenceID field.
• you need to have permission to submit the data
• we would like it to be available to our harvester via IPT and RSS if possible, otherwise in DarwinCore format in a CSV file would work too.
• dates in ISO 8601 format, i.e., YYYY-MM-DD
• caution to preserve diacritics in people and place names (save the data in UTF8 format).

For all images/media objects

1. each media record needs to have a GUID: a persistent globally unique identifier or at least a unique (within the dataset) identifier in the occurrenceID field.
2. we need there to be Audubon Core metadata file, with one record to go with each media record, and we can provide coaching to help you create that file. The more you can flesh out the details of the image, the more likely it will be to be highly retrievable.
3. just like the ownership of catalog records, the media records need to provided freely and with permission, and each record needs to have at least Creative Commons permission = "CC BY"

The methods for linking the catalog records to the media records are in this document, as well as explanation about creating GUIDs for the records:

• https://www.idigbio.org/content/guid-guide-data-providers-0

Details about data ingestion requirements and guidelines are here:

• https://www.idigbio.org/content/idigbio-data-ingestion-requirements-and-guidelines

Additional info about image format is here:

• https://www.idigbio.org/content/idigbio-image-file-format-requirements-and-recommendations

If you need to learn about acceptable Creative Commons licenses in iDigBio:

• https://www.idigbio.org/content/idigbio-intellectual-property-policy

Sample Scenarios of Data Transformations to Prepare Data for Ingestion

• Example preparing specimen data from Illinois Natural History survey (INHS) fish collection from FileMakerPro
• Example of transformations on InvertNet image metadata dataset