Symbiota Support Group Meetings

[themerekat]

The Symbiota Support Hub invites you to join our Symbiota Support Group Meetings!

They are held the first Monday of every month at 12:00 noon Pacific / 1:00 PM Mountain / 2:00 Central / 3:00 Eastern.

In these meetings, we will demonstrate a Symbiota tool or feature, make important announcements, and answer user questions. The demonstration portion, but not the Q&A, will be recorded. More information about these sessions can be found here: https://www.idigbio.org/content/symbiota-support-group.

Have a topic in mind that you'd like covered during one of these meetings? Comment here with ideas!

[ljwalker]

From RMBL: keys & character matrices

[ljwalker]

This topic has now been covered: https://youtu.be/GMk2WkE3Hno

[ljwalker]

From SoRo user: Discussion of collecting event data in Symbiota portals

[themerekat]

Can we get more clarification on this? Like, do we store event-based data?

[ljwalker]

Another SoRo user adds, "I would love to hear more about managing event data in symbiota, like how can we create events and lump records into them. Or how can we get the data out of symbiota." @ricklevy21

[ljwalker]

From CCH2 user: How to update snapshot collections

[themerekat]

This has now been covered! https://youtu.be/0i6zudJFtu8

[jesslane13]

How about personal observation management? We've been investigating this as a tool for some of our collectors to enter their own data and make their own labels, without burdening them with full editor access. I haven't seen much about this in the docs.

[ljwalker]

@jesslane13 - This topic has been scheduled for Dec. 5: https://symbiota.org/symbiota-support-group/

[themerekat]

Here's the recording! https://youtu.be/u65P_3VqGVI

[ljwalker]

Jennifer Girón (@JCGiron) requests a session on glossaries in Symbiota portals.

[themerekat]

@JCGiron, you'll be excited to hear that we've added documentation about the glossary to Symbiota Docs! https://biokic.github.io/symbiota-docs/portal_manager/glossary/

[themerekat]

We should have a session on making checklists

[themerekat]

Megan King suggests having a SSG about the loan management tools.

[ljwalker]

This topic has now been covered: https://youtu.be/RaeuXeKmFjE?si=q45WvfkdtP8sSjty

(Thanks for your suggestion, Megan King!)

[themerekat]

Suggestion from Mary Barkworth: "Make Using checklists as a topic. My impression is that they could be more widely used in building resources for teaching as well as research. For example, if the only flora available for a region includes LOTS of species, use the tools in Symbiota to create a checklist of species for a smaller area and then make that the starting point for developing a dichotomous family key (which could be posted to KeyBase and the taxa linked to taxon pages in SEINet)."

[STHerbariumLSU]

It would be useful to have a session on the best workflow for a WeDigBio event using Symbiota. Please include the best way to add records and review records from these events in "review/verify records". Any tips to keep up with volunteer transcribers during an event would be helpful. As well, the best way to clean up after an event. This goes a bit outside of the Symbiota scope, but would be nice to have recorded, if not already! Thanks! - Jennie Kluse

[ljwalker]

@STHerbariumLSU Thank you for making this suggestion!

While not WeDigBio-specific, you might find this Support Group meeting about crowdsourcing to be helpful: https://youtu.be/HmDMtRrLn-U?si=_ssWN7x7z_KXZkNj&t=263

[Alison-CenterforPlantDiversity]

Hello, I'm a new reviewer of student data entry, and I've figured out a few ways to quickly search for errors when QC'ing the entered data (four portals: CCH2, Bryoportal, Lichenportal and Macroalga Portal), but would like to learn more tricks for developing a checklist of what to check and how to see data needing editing. Thanks, Alison Colwell

[zoonomen-APP]

Hi Alison,
I am working on a project with Jim Hinds -- redoing the Lichen Checklist for New England. A great deal of my work (and contribution) consists of reviewing, editing, correcting the CLH held data for the related records. I live and breath daily by the joys and sorrows that result from the challenges of data entry. Despite my ranting and raving, my sympathies are with the data entry stalwarts.
I would be interested in hearing about your approaches and problems. I anticipate that my approach may differ substantially from yours but may still have a few tricks.
Alan P. Peterson
My email is appeterson37@gmail.com

[ljwalker]

Suggested during March 2024 SSG meeting: Best practices for including iNaturalist data in Symbiota portals. (@mickley!)

[mickley]

@ljwalker Sorry I missed this. I'll try to listen to the recording, but is there anything that I can add?

I am also still waiting for my code that provides batch upload of linked resources from last March to be incorporated into Symbiota, see BioKIC/Symbiota#701, so that is holding up any potential iNaturalist features on my end.

[ljwalker]

Suggested during March 2024: Label customization how-to (requested by @Alison-CenterforPlantDiversity & Karen Golinski)

[ljwalker]

This topic was originally covered in June 2022: https://youtu.be/EjydsbVGyRA?si=xPoMVT5qFlZlEVBC

[karenGolinski]

I watched the training some time ago and chatted with Katie about labels separately but I’m still not satisfied with the way they look. I will submit an email to discuss again. Thanks y’all.

[themerekat]

Digitization workflows using Symbiota

[themerekat]

Mark Barkworth suggests how to use Symbiota portals to create floras/faunas as part of a research project. This uses checklists, but is more tailored toward how you can curate these over the course of a project.