Emerging Technologies Input Needed

[Stinger Guala]

Greetings all,

I would be grateful for any input that you can provide regarding new and
innovative technologies for research facilites infrastructure in the Taxacomer
community. These would be things that may be currently emerging or are about
to emerge in the next few years. In this community I'm particularly interested
in input on technologies for digitization, processing or curation of research
collections of any kind. I co-chair the Research Infrastructure subcommittee
for the design of NEON. You can provide your own input to the design process
directly at (http://www.neoninc.org/Article15.html) but I would like to know
about anything that you might want to put forth so that I can bring it
directly to the next meeting in early january.  I'm also looking for new ideas
to bring to a GBIF symposium on collections digitization in january as well.
I know that you are all busy but I want to get all of the community input that
I can and I don't think that it hurts to ask. Of course I'm aware of the
multiple image based digitization efforts for herbariumn collections but if
anyone is automating other parts of collections processing and curation for
high throughput - or has high volume automated methods outside of the
herbarium community, I would be most grateful to know about it.

Cheers,
Stinger


Gerald F. Guala, Ph.D.
USDA, NRCS, National Plant Data Center
P.O. Box 74490
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70874-4490 USA
Tel: 225.775.6280
Fax: 225.775.8883
npdc.usda.gov
plants.usda.gov