A talk on how to use LifeDesk given at the Willi Hennig Society meeting in May 2010.

1. LifeDesk: Managing and Sharing
Biodiversity Research on the Web
Torsten Dikow
Biodiversity Synthesis Center
Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA

2. “The Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key
information about all life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the
world” (www.eol.org)
www.eol.org blog.eol.org

3. Encyclopedia of Life – EOL
◊ 1.8 Million species pages
◊ A web-site for every species that roams or roamed the earth
◊ Freely available – Customizable by user – Common portal
general layout of an
EOL page

4. Biodiversity Heritage Library – BHL www.biodiversitylibrary.org
main page
BHL

5. Support provided by EOL – Biodiversity Synthesis Center
◊ Funding for meetings and workshops on diverse topics
◊ next deadlines 1 July 2010, 1 November 2010 synthesis.eol.org
BioSynC main page

6. LifeDesk www.lifedesks.org
LifeDesk main page

7. Drupal – open source content management platform
Use of Drupal:
BBC
White House.gov
CNN
NASA
NATO
Greenpeace
United Nations
FedEx
major newspapers
...

8. Drupal – also being used by Scratchpads
www.scratchpads.eu

9. LifeDesk – Public Access – leptogastrinae.lifedesks.org

10. LifeDesk –
Scientist
Access

11. LifeDesk – My Account & Site Settings
• update your personal account • change color scheme
• change logo

12. LifeDesk – Site Settings
Customization
◊ botanical and zoological nomenclatorial differences
◊ user selects taxonomic ranks to be used
◊ taxonomic relationships
• synonymy
• availability
• incorrect spelling

13. LifeDesk – Classification editor

14. LifeDesk – Classification editor

15. LifeDesk – Creating Content

16. LifeDesk – Image Import

17. LifeDesk – Taxon Pages
show ...
Chapter definitions follow TDWG
◊ text entered here standard
◊ images from gallery
◊ taxonomy / classification
◊ references / bibliography

18. LifeDesk – Bibliography
or import
◊ BibTex
◊ EndNote
◊ RIS
◊ MARC

19. LifeDesk – EOL Partnership
EOL species page

20. Species page in LifeDesk
http://leptogastrinae.lifedesks.org/pages/1797
Species page on EOL
http://www.eol.org/pages/770905

21. LifeDesk – Use of ...
◊ LifeDesk = best way to upload species information to EOL
Your participation is needed to improve EOL !
◊ LifeDesk = infrastructure for collaboration online
◊ LifeDesk = great outreach component for NSF applications
◊ LifeDesk modules available for download (http://www.lifedesks.org/modules)
• develop your own Drupal web presence
• still provide content to the EOL
◊ functionality improved regularly (http://www.lifedesks.org/newfeatures)
• bulk upload of text or images
◊ http://synthesis.eol.org/users/tdikow

22. Thank You ...
◊ LifeDesk developer David Shorthouse
◊ Encyclopedia of Life funding sources & BioSynC
◊ NSF REVSYS (DEB-0919333)