New Canadensys explorer features: stats view & occurrence pages

Thursday, 2 August 2012

We are happy to announce two new features for the Canadensys explorer: stats view & occurrence pages.

Stats view

In addition to map and table view, you can now display basic statistics about your query in stats view. Just click the button at the top and the explorer will crunch the numbers for you. The statistics currently include classification, location, date and altitude. For example, here are the statistics for all georeferenced records from the Green Plant Herbarium (TRT):

We hope this will help you discover what kind of data are available in the Canadensys network.

Occurrence pages

Until now, you could only preview a record in the explorer; the full record was only available when you downloaded the data. Starting today, you can open any record in its own occurrence page by clicking View full record on the preview pane.

The default view will show you the most relevant information, including a map, coordinate uncertainty and image(s) if provided. The Darwin Core view shows you all the provided data for that record and how it is interpreted by the explorer. The toggle link lets you switch between all Darwin Core terms and those used within the Canadensys network.

Linking to a page

The occurrence page also allows you to reference a record on the Canadensys explorer. The URL has the following structure:

http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/d/dataset-shortname/occurrence-id

occurrence-id is the unique and mandatory occurrenceID given to every record in the dataset. dataset-shortname is the shortname used for the dataset on the Canadensys repository and in the preferred format for citations.

The URL for a dataset on the explorer has a very similar structure, which shows you all records for that dataset:

http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/d/dataset-shortname

And so does the URL for a dataset on the repository (which is stored in datasetID):

http://dataset.canadensys.net/dataset-shortname

Examples

http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/d/win-vascular-specimens/259021
http://data.canadensys.net/explorer/d/win-vascular-specimens
http://dataset.canadensys.net/win-vascular-specimens

Goodbye

This is my last blog post as Biodiversity Informatics Manager for Canadensys. It has been an absolute joy working for you. You can always reach me via Twitter, LinkedIn or email. Thanks!

Peter