speciesLink - The Brazilian experience on setting up a DiGIR network
De Giovanni, Renato. Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental (CRIA), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.The Reference Center on Environmental Information (Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental), CRIA, a Brazilian not-for-profit, non-governmental organization, has implemented a pilot project connecting twelve biological collections and a centralized information system with observational data using DiGIR as the access protocol. The network coverage area is currently restricted to the State of São Paulo as the project is funded by a state financing agency, Fapesp, but is expected to cover a wider area in the future. The criteria used for selecting the collections were basically its willingness to share data and its significance (taxonomic group, geographic representation, number of strains/samples).
Many problems were faced starting from the fact that most collections were beginning to think about digitizing their data with basic problems such as outdated hardware and software, the lack of personnel and poor internet connectivity.
To overcome these basic and critical problems and implement a fully functional network, the CRIA team worked together with each collection, providing basic equipment, helping in the selection of appropriate software, training and importing data. The original network design based on a fully distributed system through high speed connectivity was adapted to accommodate these limitations and at the same time guarantee total control of each collection over its own data.
The speciesLink project is being developed as an open source implementation to support inter-institutional sharing of data and web resources.