Digging for gold: data archaeology in the framework of the LifeWatchGreece infrastructure Sarah Faulwetter1, Dimitra Mavraki1, Stamatina Nikolopoulou1, Eleftheria Antaloudaki1,2*, Evangelia Avramidou1,3,*, Antonios Avgoustinos1,4,*, Panagiotis Damianidis1,5,*, Panagiotis D. Dimitriou1,6,*, Athanasios Evagelopoulos1,7,*, Alexandros Galanidis1,8,*, Chris Georgiadis1,9,*, Vasilis Gerovasileiou1,*, Themistocles Giannoulis1,10,*, Aglaia Legaki1,9,*, Dimitrios Lykidis1,11,*, Zoi Mylona1,11,*, Eleni Panayiotou1,2*, Panagiota Paranou-Lioliou1,5,*, Gabriella Papastefanou1,6,9,*, Christina Pavloudi1,12,13,*, Panagiota Stathopoulou1,4,*, Irini Tsikopoulou1,6,*, Marilena Tsompanou1,14,* 1Institute
of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Thalassocosmos, 71500, Heraklion, Crete, Greece 2 Natural History Museum of Crete, University of Crete, Knossos Av., P.O. Box 2208, 71409 Heraklion, Crete, Greece 3Laboratory of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, Department of Forestry and Natural Environment, P.O. Box 238 Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece 4 Department of Environmental and Natural Resources Management, University of Patras, Greece 5 School of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece 6 University of Crete, Biology Department, 70013 Heraklion, Crete, Greece. 7 Department of Marine Sciences, University of the Aegean, 81100 Mytilene, Greece 8 Department of Environment, University of the Aegean, University Hill, 81100, Mytilene, Greece 9 Department of Biology, Section of Zoology and Marine Biology, University of Athens, Panepistimiopolis 15784, Athens, Greece 10 Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece 11Laboratory of Environmental Research and Education, Department of Primary Education, Democritus University of Thrace, Nea Hili, Alexandroupolis, 68100, Greece 12 Department of Biology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Ghent, 9000 Gent, Belgium, 13 Department of Microbial Ecophysiology, Faculty of Biology, University of Bremen, 28359, Bremen, Germany 14 Institute of Oceanography, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Anavyssos, Attiki, Greece *equal contribution, alphabetical order E-mail:
[email protected], Telephone: +30 2810 337742, Fax: +30 2810 337870
Historical publications and expedition logbooks contain a tremendous amount of valuable biogeographic data, but these manuscript data are of little use to researchers attempting to perform comprehensive large-scale studies. The information in these publications is unstructured, hidden in free text, not annotated with metadata and thus not retrievable. However, the historical record of biodiversity is of paramount importance as baseline information for assessments and for prediction of future trends. The LifeWatchGreece infrastructure has therefore started an initiative to identify, document and digitize historical (pre-1945) data and mobilize them into global biogeographic databases. An inventory of historical publications containing marine biogeographic data from the Mediterranean Sea and terrestrial biogeographic data from Greece was created, containing up to now over 450 identified publications. For the actual digitization process, the publications were prioritized according to a variety of criteria ranging from taxonomic, geographic and temporal coverage to the level of detail of information, language constraints and accessibility (electronically / in libraries). The prioritized datasets were documented extensively with metadata and the data are being digitized and transformed into a standard format (DarwinCore). Quality control procedures are being applied to the data before they are published online into global biogeographic databases such as the Ocean
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Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Up to now, full metadata for over 80 historical datasets are already available online through the LifeWatchGreece portal, and the actual data are growing, slowly bridging the gaps in Mediterranean biogeography. Keywords: historical data, marine biogeographic data, terrestrial biogeographic data, Mediterranean Sea, Greece, Darwin Core
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