Filtered-Push: A Map-Reduce Platform for Collaborative Taxonomic Data Management

The Filtered-Push project aims to establish a cross-institutional infrastructure to help biologists (especially taxonomists) share and improve digitized natural history collection data via the exchange and management of specimen record annotations. Three challenges commonly confront the holders of data documenting specimens collected in the field: the identification of the organism and the annotation of records that arose from a single collection event but where parts of the organism have been distributed and are held as duplicates in multiple institutions; the quality control of new annotations [2]; and, more generally, the dissemination of annotations of specimen records, whether or not representing duplicate specimens. Addressing these can accelerate the rate of digital capture of data from paper records (such as handwritten labels attached to pinned insects or pasted on herbarium sheets with dried plants) and provide mechanisms for the global community of biologists to improve the quality of the data.