T236 Curating Physical Samples in a Digital World

Tuesday, 24 October 2017
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Room 3B

IMPLEMENTING THE INTERNATIONAL GEO SAMPLE NUMBER (IGSN) IN AUSTRALIA

Paper number: T236-14
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:45 PM – 5:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

Physical samples are important observational artefacts for understanding the complexity of our environment and its resources. Unique persistent identifiers, like the International Geo Sample Number (IGSN), can facilitate unambiguous identification of physical samples across various repositories, and allow associated metadata and data derived from these samples to be shared.

CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and Curtin University collaborated to coordinate IGSN in Australia and how these agencies allocate IGSN identifiers to physical samples. As a result of this project, Australian has three IGSN registration agents. The catalogues provided by these agents are aggregated into an Australian IGSN portal. To enable a harmonized view in the portal we created a metadata schema for the description of Australian physical samples from the geosciences and other disciplines, based on prior work in CSIRO and the Ope Geospatial Consortium (OGC). This metadata schema subsequently served as a basis for the general IGSN description schema.

In the development and implementation of an Australian IGSN infrastructure, we took a pragmatic approach that sought to reuse existing models and technology. This accelerated the implementation process and helped to improve already existing tools. All technical development is done in close alignment with DataCite and the materials are made available on GitHub.

The emerging pattern of governance and technical collaboration established in Australia may also serve as a blueprint for similar IGSN collaborations internationally. The successful deployment of a sample identifier across several organisations in academia, research and government agencies has also sparked interest in the IGSN infrastructure and governance from the life-sciences community.

The project was funded by the Australian Research Data Services program. The Australian National Data Services (ANDS) also plays an important role in this collaboration as a promoter for IGSN, facilitator for outreach to adjoining sectors and as a host for the IGSN-related vocabulary service.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2017AM-302649

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