Products & Services

Informatics focuses on imagining, designing and implementing biological collections software for research data publication, analysis and management. We develop and support a multi-platform database system for the digitization and curation of museum specimen information, as well as a suite of software tools and web services for computing and visualizing models of species distributions based on climate and museum specimen data.

We have a 15-year track record of engineering and supporting high quality research software. Our technology staff actively collaborates with research informatics laboratories in the U.S. and internationally to develop leading edge, open source, biodiversity software solutions, including biodiversity computing middleware, data repositories, network protocols, and science education materials.

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Specify solutions

The Specify Project is a cyberinfrastructure collaboration with researchers at hundreds of biological museums who use Specify Software, and with bioinformatics programmers around the world with whom we collaborate to maintain and extend Specify. Products in include the Specify 6 Collections Computing Platform, the Specify Workbench, Specify EZDB, Specify Uploader, and a variety of new hardware and virtual platforms for Specify for mobile data collection. We also provide a software helpdesk, as well as Specify configuration and customization.

Legacy Data Conversion

We deconstruct legacy collection databases and map their data fields to Specify's modern, multi-disciplinary database design. Migrating existing data to Specify can be done to ensure completeness and so that the new data set takes advantage of Specify's database and user interface data form design.  We typically customize data forms for newly migrated data so that all historical data fields are visible and usable in Specify.

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Project Planning

Our department researchers and software engineers have deep expertise in biological collection databases, data concepts, and software options. As part of our mission, we frequently collaborate with collections researchers on database server and client software strategies for specimen data analysis and management. 

We provide solutions as multidisciplinary partnerships with a the goal of producing innovative, high research impact and sustainable cyberinfrastructure. 

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Training

We offer workshops on the use and configuration of Specify 6 for research collections management. Workshops are typically hosted by a requesting institution and we provide the instructor and materials. One or two-day workshops are an efficient way to quickly master Specify’s interface and functions.