What is IBIS ?

IBIS, the Integrated Biodiversity Information System, provides the infrastructure, applications and services supporting biodiversity informatics for the ANBG, CANB and their partnership with CSIRO Plant Industry, the Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research (CANBR).

IBIS incorporates systems for the integration, retrieval and disemination of biodiversity information; collections management (ALIVE, ANHSIR, APII); digital asset management; nomenclatural and taxonomic indices (APNI, APC); information delivery (www.anbg|cpbr.gov.au); web services (flora-online) and; federated database support (AVH, IPNI, GBIF).

IBIS links the data held in the various collections of the Australian National Botanic Gardens, the Australian National Herbarium, the Australian Plant Image Index and the Australian Plant Name Index.

We rely heavily on open source solutions (Apache, Perl, Java) and employ national and global standards (HISPID,TDWG,BioCase) for both information management and delivery where-ever possible. Oracle provides our production RDBMS (SQL engine) and the Solaris operating environment.

What's New

ABRS

• Since early 2010 IBIS also provides infrastructure, database and application support fro the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS).

ALA

• IBIS is currently partnering with the Atlas of Living Australia, the Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS), and the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH) on the ALA-NSL (National Species Lists) Project to assemble and deliver the most comprehensive, current and authoritative checklist of Australian species ever produced. The ANBG is also collaborating with major international authorities responsible for maintaining international species checklists, and is a contributor to major international projects which are aiming to build a checklist of all organisms in the world.

• New APNI/APC services.
• New data model integrating all nomenclatural and taxonomic objects.
• New Service layer
• Linked Data.
• A Semantic Web Hack championed by Tim Berners-Lee.

Data integration

• Consistent linkages in place between ANHSIR, APII and Living Collection records, with ability to traverse these in output from online queries.
• Linkages from Living Collection system to Plant Name table and APNI (allows consistent querying/reporting by name, including names listed in SPRAT);

Living collection

• Redevelopment of Living Collection Information management and materials transaction system.

Australian Tropical Herbarium (CNS)

• Using ANHSIR for Herbarium Database management and data delivery.
• Incorporation of specimen records from Queensland Research Station, Atherton.

Photo

• Redevelopment of Application Architecture and User Interfaces.
• loading of the Australian Tropical Rainforest key images with BIG (about 11,000 new images)

AVH

• Re-released 2010.

• Specimen records within a radius of a map point or location: Plant Locator
  

• Specimen records within a radius of a map point or location: Plant Census

Plant Names

Australian Plant Name Index -- APNI     •
APNI is a tool for the botanical community that deals with plant names and their usage in the scientific literature, whether as a current name or synonym.
APNI does not recommend any particular taxonomy or nomenclature.
A shorter 'names only' view is also available. (about APNI, WIN and APC)

Australian Plant Census - APC
Is providing a nationally agreed list of scientific endorsed by the Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria (CHAH).

The APC is a work in progress with only half of our names assigned to an APC taxon. We are still about 18 months away from completing the first pass.

• APC manifests most closely in the NSL service layer

A quick guide to names and name changes?
In the meantime a best guess at the current name of a plant using a fall back through previous compilations, recent revisions and protologues is available from 'What's its Name? WIN'.
To be replaced by APC.

Living Plants

Plants alive in the Botanic Gardens at the last stocktake - VIC-query
This tells you what Section they are in and how many there are.

Complete search of the Living Collections database - STOCK
This contains detailed records of the planting history of the Botanic Gardens.

ANBG-Stock and Merge: interfaces linking Living Collections to Herbarium specimens
Under development.

Stocktake an ANBG Section - links living plants, herbarium specimens and APNI.

New User interfaces : An upgraded version of the system(s) which support the Nursery, Plant Records, Seedbank and Horticultural functions is being developed. This will meet our requirements for more complete documentation of plants in the Gardens - provenance, propagation history, treatments and success rates. The proposed system will also give greater support to business processes that are required to manage the collection such as propagation, plant out, stocke take, clone and section assessments. It will also provide the basis for moving forward with GIS in the gardens.

Herbarium Specimens

Australian National Herbarium Specimen Information Register - ANHSIR
Available to general users, but more detailed information is available to registered users with a reason for such access.

ANHSIR specimen records within a radius of a map point or location: Plant Locator (under development)
ANHSIR specimen records within a radius of a map point or location: Plant Census (under development)

Australian Tropical Herbarium - CNS
A joint venture between the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, James Cook University, the Director of National Parks, the Queensland Department of State Development, Trade and Innovation and Queensland's Environmental Protection Agency.

Photographs

Search for digital images using Genus (and species) .
This searches from over 26,000 photos from the APII that are born-digital or slides that have been digitized on Photo-CDs and displays them.

Search for records of all plant photos using Genus and species (only 50% digitized).     •
This searches records of over 48,000 plant photos held in the APII, those that are digitized are displayed as thumbnails.

Search for digital images of plant photos by Family.
This only searches photos that have been digitized. It uses frames. (A non-frame version is accessable). Also by family and Genus

Search for non-plant photos using key words (landscapes, animals, national parks etc).
Searches miscellaneous photos held by the ANBG, you must surround each key word with a '%', ie Key Words: %Kakadu% Only a small proportion have been digitized or are born-digital.

Collaborative Projects - national and international

Council of Heads of Australian Herbaria - EOL

Herbarium Information Systems Committee - HISCOM

Australia's Virtual Herbarium - AVH
IBIS contributes its data to the AVH project, and maintains a node on our server. (about AVH - ppt) •

Australian Biological Resources Study – Flora Online Australian Faunal Directory
The flora component is a collaboration between Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) and ANBG.

Taxonomy Research Information Network- TRINand their Wiki

Atlas of Living Australia - (ALA)
In this partnership with the ALA we are working to integrate AFD and APC/APNI at the services layer required to deliver an aggregated dataset to external clients using standard forms, protocols and services. The requirement is to distribute vertical slices of the data set to client application systems in a way that enables maintenance of data quality and forward reference through subsequent taxonomic review. In the process, we will improve data management, add Life Science Identifiers (LSIDs), increase usability and interoperability, implement web services over the Taxon Concept Schema (TCS) and fully support the TAPIR protocol for data discovery and content delivery. The work program is designed to position the application architecture to provide generic taxonomic and nomenclatural services over the existing dataset and create a platform for a collaborative infrastructure supporting all aspects of taxon profile development.

International Plant Name Index - Search IPNI
IBIS contributes its data, together with Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Harvard University Herbarium (about IPNI)

Species Links – Open speciesLinks Portal
Quick access to a range of databases based on binomial plant names:

Global Biodiversity Information Facility - GBIF
IBIS contributes data to GBIF whose aim is to make the world's biodiversity data freely and universally available on the Internet.

Encyclopedia of Life - EOL

Taxonomic Databases Working Group - TDWG
ibis contributes through TDWG membership, participation on working groups for Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD) and Taxonomic Names ( (TCS) and support of the TDWG Infrastructure Project (TIP). For current status of these initiatives try the TDWG Wiki