Changes to support multimedia in Symbiota portals
The Symbiota Support Hub is excited to announce that audio files will be supported in the upcoming version of the Symbiota code, Symbiota 3.2. Support for audio files was funded by the Academy of Natural Sciences at Drexel University and will allow occurrence records to be associated with audio recordings, such as insect sounds, bird songs, mammal calls, and others. Audio recordings can provide key data to taxonomically identify occurrence records and provide behavioral and trait information. These developments are just one step toward a richer, more extended specimen.
To support this new feature, you will notice a key change to the wording of previously image-centric tools. Previous references to “images” will largely be replaced with “media” and “media resources”for example, the Occurrence Editor’s “Images” tab will be referred to as the “Media” tab. Moving forward, you can consider “media” to be synonymous with “images” (and “audio”) where you see this word referenced in your portal. Otherwise, Symbiota’s “new” media features will function the same way as the previous image tools. Despite this change in labeling, features once used for images only will continue to function as they always have, with the added option to incorporate audio files. Image (media) links will continue to be downloadable in the Darwin Core “multimedia” extension file. Importantly, Symbiota’s existing support for images will not change as part of this enhancement!
Audio file formats to be supported include MP3, WAV, and OGG. At this time, the SSH is not offering hosting services for batch uploading audio files, but we are open to discussion if the need arises. Just get in touch! help@symbiota.org