Where? SPNHC 2025!
When? Saturday, May 31, 2025
Workshop Title: Why does my Symbiota portal do that? How “back end” Symbiota architecture affects your data management experience.
Workshop Abstract: Symbiota (https://symbiota.org) is a popular collection management and aggregator software used by over 1000 collections to actively digitize and manage their natural history specimen data in over 60 online data portals. Symbiota portals are designed to be user friendly for all levels of experience, and as such, the complexity of the underlying data structure may sometimes be “hidden” from the user’s view. In this workshop, we will provide a deeper dive into key elements of the Symbiota database structure to demystify why certain tools function the way that they do. Proposed topics include: taxonomic thesaurus, geographic thesaurus, associated identifiers, indexing of people names, and more. Prospective participants are encouraged to vote for topics of interest discussed at this workshop via GitHub (https://github.com/BioKIC/symbiota-docs/discussions/680) or email us ideas at help@symbiota.org.
Attendee Requirements: Personal computer
Venue requirements: Classroom or grouped tables; preference for smaller room to facilitate discussion rather than auditorium or presenting room, projector, Wi-Fi, power outlets, extension cords
Attendance cap: 30
Length: Half day
Cost: $25 USD (paid at time of conference registration)