The LinBi project[1] ran between February 2019 and October 2020 as an
EU-funded
INEA-
CEF project which focused on
biodiversity and documentation of the variety of life on Earth. This diversity is preserved in a wide range of formats – books, illustrations, specimen scans, glass plate photographs, sound recordings, herbarium sheets, video and more. LinBi brought together botanists, researchers, the media and the public in a collaborative effort to enhance and support appreciation and use of European biodiversity material. The project has provided 1.3 million items of cultural heritage content to
Europeana.
LinBi partners were:
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (RBB,[2] Germany) public service broadcaster for the German region of Berlin and Brandenburg,
Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHM,[4] Austria) which includes departments of anthropology, botany, geology, mineralogy, karst and caves, palaeontology and zoology
Angewandte Informationstechnik Forschungsgesellschaft (AIT,[5] Austria) an Austrian software and research company specialising in information engineering and development of information systems tailored to complex environments in public administration, social/youth welfare and health care,
Agentschap Plantentuin Meise (APM,[6] Belgium), an internationally renowned research institution focussing on plant diversity research and conservation.
Technical Overview
LinBi created a data enrichment platform[7] to link existing items of data with new items, creating ‘enriched’ information objects. These were then processed by the OpenUp! Natural History content aggregator and provided to Europeana. The project has created three virtual exhibitions for Europeana. These exhibitions interlinked existing content with new and external data. The exhibitions focussed on Edible Plants from the Americas[8] (curated by RJB-CSIC), François Crépin and the Study of Wild Roses[9] (curated by Meise) and Magical, Mystical and Medicinal – Psychoactive plants and fungi,[10] (curated by RJB-CSIC).
Hanquart N, Hoste I, Soffelen P (2020): ‘François Crépin and the study of wild roses: A rose is a rose is a rose – a virtual exhibition from Europeana’ (
French and
Flemish)
Huybrechts P, Trekels M, Dillen M, Groom Q, Mergen P, Gordon M (2020): ’Feasibility of 3D and video metadata annotation using crowdsourcing platforms’ (to be published in
Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) early 2021)