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BG-BASE News

Note: the following text has been taken directly from the Autumn 1996 issue of BG-BASE News (cream). No attempt has been made to reformat it for use on the web. From this issue onwards the technical tips section is not available on the web as it became only available to users with up-to date support agreements.

BG-BASE News Volume 4, Numbers 3-4

Introduction

The choices are staggering. IBM or Macintosh? Windows 3.1 or Windows 95? Netscape or Microsoft Explorer? Advanced Revelation or OpenInsight? This last question may startle you a bit ... what is OpenInsight?

OpenInsight is Revelation Technologies' Windows-based database manager. While the software has been on the market since late 1993, it is only within the last several months that OpenInsight's functionality has approached that of its sister (and DOS-based) product, Advanced Revelation. OpenInsight's recent maturation is due in large part to a relatively new business alliance partnership between Revelation and Lotus Development Corporation.

Why should you as a BG-BASE user care about any of this?

First of all, it assures you that we, the developers of BG-BASE, will have an evolving platform upon which to develop future versions of the software. Secondly, it secures a market niche for Revelation, an all-important factor in the cut-throat corporate computer world. Finally, we simply think that it is good for you to know such things. We view all of you as partners, and as such you need to know what our long-term development strategies are in order to assure the continued development and success of BG-BASE.

So when can you expect the first release of BG-BASE in OpenInsight? While we undoubtedly will release a Windows version of BG-BASE at some point, we feel no immediate urgency in doing so. First and foremost we would like to see OpenInsight evolve a bit more as a product. We took this same approach when moving from Revelation G2 to Advanced Revelation, and we feel that approach has paid off. We will also need to re-think our user interface, as the differences between DOS and Windows products in this area are significant. Finally, in the questionnaire that many of you recently completed a Windows version of BG-BASE was not listed as an overriding priority. In keeping with our general policy, we look to our current users to guide future development efforts. With nearly 75 BG-BASE installations to date, who better to guide the future direction of the software?

Kerry Walter &Mike O'Neal

Advanced Training Seminars

The third BG-BASE Advanced Training Seminar was held at The Holden Arboretum on 15-16 September 1996. Participants included:

The next U.S. training seminar will be held March 9-10, 1997. Space is limited to five registrants and there is a registration fee. Contact Mike O'Neal at The Holden Arboretum for more information.

UK BG-BASE Users Conference

The first UK BG-BASE users conference was held over the weekend of 23-24 August 1996, at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). The weekend was novel in two respects:

1 -this was the first-ever UK conference for BG-BASE users (now an annual occurrence at every AABGA conference in the US),

2 - this was the first such conference to consider a number of plant record management issues in depth.

The conference was attended by existing UK users from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Royal Botanic Garden Kew, the Royal Horticultural Society, Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum, the University of Oxford Botanic Garden, Bute Estates Ltd. and Castlewellan Forest Park. Also Susan Kelley of the Arnold Arboretum also attended.

Day one

The meeting was opened by the Regius Keeper of RBGE David Ingram who reinforced the RBGE commitment to BG-BASE and to excellence in plant records in general. Then BG-BASE version 4.5 was launched in the UK with a demonstration by Kerry Walter. Later in the first day Martin Pullan gave a presentation of producing "on-line" information systems from an Advanced Revelation database including the details behind the production of the RBGE living collection on the world wide web, as seen at:

http://www.rbge.org.uk/forms/names.html

After lunch RBGE herbarium staff demonstrated the use of the preserved collections module of BG-BASE. The demonstration included the barcoding of specimens and the production of packing lists; the results of which some of our readers will have already seen if they have engaged in specimen loans or exchanges with the RBGE herbarium within the past year.

The first day way finished by Quentin Cronk whose presentation on the flow of genetic information through a botanic garden gave rise to discussions and ideas as to how botanic gardens manage their data and how BG-BASE can be used in this process.

Day two

The second day was started by David Chamberlain who led the discussion on the production of camera-ready publications directly from BG-BASE and the recent production of two publications on the genus Rhododendron from RBGE's version of BG-BASE.

Kerry Walter then demonstrated the images module of BG-BASE, including the electronic storage and display of images and the new facility to track loans of slides via barcodes, similar to what's done with herbarium specimens.

Crinan Alexander led a discussion on the importance of verifying both living accessions and herbarium specimens (see New and improved below). Becky Govier illustrated the importance of historical records at RBGE.

After this the group was taken outside to the RBGE nursery to observe Martin Gardner and Phil Thomas of the Conifer Conservation Program showing the use of BG-BASE to record individual genotypes in numerous sites. A valuable topic as a number of institutions and users are finding that they are getting a non-contiguous collection as more "out-station" become under their control or want to be included in a records system.

There was time at the end of each day for some (not enough!) hands-on training and specific questions from the participants, as well as a chance to try the latest version of BG-BASE.

Follow-up meetings are planned on an annual basis, with the next one most likely to be held at Hillier. (See Users Profile in this issue)

New and improved

This section is designed to tell the BG-BASE user community about the new and/or improved features within the system.

Publishing from BG-BASE

BG-BASE has been used for years to produce various collections catalogues (for example, The Holden Arboretum's 563-page 1995 Catalog of Woody Plants, the 477-page 1995 Catalogue of Plants Growing at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, and the recent 165-page Inventory of Living Collections from the Arnold Arboretum. BG-BASE was also used to produce the 334-page Chinese Plants at the RBG Edinburgh. In each of these cases except that of the Holden Arboretum (which was a "regular" fixed-pitch, columnar output), these books have been produced by having BG-BASE act as a direct-to-page publishing device; in other words, BG-BASE made all the decisions about the placement and layout of the final camera-ready copy and exported the data in PCL (printer control language), the language understood by all laser printers (but not by humans!). The same technique has been used to produce the forthcoming 800 page book on the threatened plants of the world, compiled by WCMC. Although this technique is very efficient in that no other software, such as word processors or desktop publishing programs, is involved, the final layout must be carefully decided and designed before data are exported from the database.

Recently, we have enhanced BG-BASE to allow it to export certain kinds of data in RTF (rich text format). RTF output is the lingua franca of virtually all word processors and desktop publishing programs. This means that virtually any program can pick up an RTF file and flow it onto the page with any page layout you desire. Although this involves an extra step, there is tremendous flexibility in the "look and feel" of the final product - you can modify the columns, margins, typeface, etc., to your heart's content until you get things exactly as you wish them to look. This RTF output routine has been used to produce two recent publications by RBGE - Accepted names in Rhododendron section Vireya (39 pp) and The genus Rhododendron. Its classification & synonymy (181 pp). It is also the technique being used by the Royal Horticultural Society to produce next year's The RHS Plant Finder (approximately 900 pages).

For further information on RBGE publications, see its home page: www.rbge.org.uk.

BG-BASE and the World Wide Web

Following on from the RTF output routines mentioned above, BG-BASE has been further enhanced to export HTML (hypertext markup language), the language of the ever-popular World Wide Web on the Internet. As the RTF output routines do for producing output for word processors and desktop publishing software, the HTML output allows BG-BASE to export information directly in a format that can be loaded into a WWW page. Martin Pullan of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has written an export routine that exports user-selected fields and records from one or more BG-BASE files and writes these to output files that can be directly loaded into a WWW form for browsing and searching; all the nasty problems of bolds, italics, font size changes, etc., within a scientific name are controlled by BG-BASE during output.

This technique has been used by RBGE to release a searchable database on its living collections (www.rbge.org.uk/forms.names.html). At this site you can enter full or partial word searches for any of RBGE's 40,000 names, and the WWW form will return all names and their synonyms that match the search criteria. Logical "ands" and "ors" are supported. Under each name is an ordered list of all RBGE accessions of that taxon, along with summary details about country of origin If an accession has one or more living plants within it, clicking on the accession number brings up a summary of those plants and displays a bed map showing where they can be found in the four geographically distinct gardens making up the RBGE system.

The importance of this technique is that the native indexes available within BG-BASE can be exported along with the HTML data, allowing you to get your data up on the web with a minimum of extra effort, and no extra indexing.

Note that this is not a live database on the web; rather, it is a copy of the live dataset, thus preventing any external tampering and thus allowing you to choose whatever fields and records you wish to show.

Foreign language help

BG-BASE is currently used in 12 countries, and not all users have English as their first language. With the exception of a Cyrillic version translated several years ago, the extensive help within BG-BASE (over 1,000 printed pages worth) has exclusively been in English - up until a few weeks ago.

With the generous support of a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to the Center for Marine Conservation, BG-BASE's ability to speak more than one language is being enhanced as this Newsletter goes to press. Rodolfo Vera from Havana, Cuba, has begun the arduous task of translating the help screens for fields in the major files making up the preserved & living collections modules. There is a new command in BG-BASE called language; entering this command allows you to choose your preferred language for the help screens. The logic behind BG-BASE's context-sensitive help key (<F1>) on entry windows has been modified to first look for field-specific help in the preferred language, and if no help can be found in that language, then the "normal" English language help screen is displayed.

Obviously, these enhanced techniques do not in and of themselves produce foreign language help; they simply allow those help screens to be displayed quickly and automatically. If any of our readers would be willing to work on translating existing help screens into any language, please contact us - we would love your help!

Determining herbarium specimens

Recent enhancements to BG-BASE now allow users with three single keystrokes to create a determination record (actually stored in the VERIFICATIONS file so that these determinations can be linked via an accession number to living material as well). As many "dets" can be linked to a single specimen as necessary. The name that the specimen is filed under can be determined by looking at the stored label name as well as the names associated with the determinations.

Optionally, this new feature can be used to produce determination slips, just as BG-BASE can be used to produce herbarium labels.

Requesting plant labels

Enhanced data sources capabilities

A recent addition to BG-BASE is the journals file, which is tightly linked to the DS file. The journals file stores a record for each journal, with fields for the full name of the journal as well as up to five abbreviations for that journal. When in the DS file, you can enter the journal's number (or enter its name and the system will return the number); the full name (or chosen abbreviation) for that journal is then brought into the source field. This new functionality can also help in standardizing the use of italics in DS citations, since the italics codes (underscores surrounding words to be italicized) can be stored in the journals record and brought automatically into the DS records.

Displaying more than 80 characters in a popup

BG-BASE has now been enhanced to allow you to press the help key (<F1>) at any line of these popups to see the full scientific name or the full citation. This works in a view-only mode, so you can press <F1> on whatever lines you wish until you find the record you are after. Following that, you press <Enter> in the popup to bring that record back into the entry window.

Horticultural tasks

Using the hort.task.codes file, you can create as many kinds of horticultural tasks as you require. Then, using the hort.tasks file, you link these tasks to individual plants (from the plants file) or to masses of plants, provided as a popup from the locations and genera files or to individual staff members.

Additional BG-BASE support staff

Rob Cubey has been working at RBGE providing general BG-BASE support as well as taking primary responsibility for writing the BG-BASE User's Manual (all 600 pages of it).for quite some time now. His first association with BG-BASE was five years ago as a student at WCMC; he has been working on various projects at RBGE since 1994, and recently is spending full time on BG-BASE matters.

Rob can be reached at the RBGE address, phone (ext. 461), and email (bg-base@rbge.org.uk).

Recent Installations

• The Jardín Botánico Nacional "Dr. Rafael Moscoso" (November, 1995) and Grupo Jaragua (January 1996) have begun to use BG-BASE to manage herbarium and natural history collections in the Dominican Republic. The herbarium, comprising some 80,000 sheets and is one of the largest in the Caribbean. Grupo Jaragua is an NGO devoted to promoting science-based policy for the protection of D.R. biodiversity resources; it maintains natural history collections and implements information systems for both research and public access..

• Kings Park and Botanic Garden (March 1996) This 400 acre garden in Perth, Australia offers stunning views of the city of Perth and of the Indian Ocean. Approximately two thirds of Kings Park is bushland and supports 465 species of flowering plants, while the display collection contains more than 2000 Western Australian native species, arranged primarily according to the plant communities in which they occur naturally. In addition, four display glasshouses exhibit plants from humid and dry tropic regions as well as ferns and carnivorous plants. The garden also contains a section consisting of rare and endangered species in cultivation.

• The Carlingford Botanic Parkland (March 1996) near Sydney, Australia adopted BG-BASE for a very unusal but important project. Volunteers are using bush management techniques in this 14.2 hectare site to control and eradicate weeds in order to preserve the flora native to the Wainamatta Shales. The Friends of Galaringi are using BG-BASE to track both the existing plants as well as those propagules that are being reintroduced into the site.

• University of Auckland (March 1996) The University of Auckland in New Zealand opened in 1883, but various gardens were already in cultivation at this site several years prior to this. The present-day site consists of three campuses encompassing a total of 145 acres. While the collections vary from campus to campus, all are actively used for teaching botany, ethnobotany, ecology, chemistry, and geography, as well as for teaching the traditional skills of weaving and dyeing as practiced by the indigenous Maori. The University serves approximately 25,000 students in 10 faculties.

• Denver Zoological Gardens (July 1996) Founded in 1896 and currently encompassing 80 acres, the Denver Zoo has become the third zoological institution to adopt BG-BASE as its plant records management system. Hosting 1.9 million visitors in 1995 with a membership numbering 42,000 households, the zoo is the number one cultural attraction in Colorado. During the installation, 16,600 plant names were generously provided by neighboring Denver Botanic Gardens and loaded into BG-BASE for use by zoo staff. The system was installed on a Novell Local Area Network.

• Staten Island Botanic Garden (August 1996) The Staten Island Botanic Garden lies within the historic 83-acre Sailor's Snug Harbor, the first maritime home and hospital for retired sailors in the United States. The garden was founded in 1977 with purchase of the property by the City of New York. Since then various collections have evolved, including an English Perennial Border, White Flower Garden, Rose Garden, Sensory Garden, Herb Garden, Pond Garden, and greenhouse with an extensive orchid collection. Brooklyn Botanic Garden graciously provided 11,750 plant names to the garden, which were pre-loaded into BG-BASE.

• Two new installations of BG-BASE in China, were undertaken during July/August 1996; the first was Guizhou Botanic Garden, [Longitude 10642'E Latitude 2634'N] a 88 hectare garden in the hills above the city of Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province. The Garden is managed by the Academy of Science of Guizhou, it is actively involved in researching Camellia and has special collections of Azalea, and Dendrobium. BG-BASE will be used to manage the living collection but is kept on a stand-alone machine in the Academy building in the city center as this office also doubles as the headquarters for the Chinese Rhododendron Society.

• The second Chinese garden to install BG-BASE this year was Hau Xi Subalpine Garden at Dyjangyan, 60 km north west of Chengdu - capital of the Province of Sichuan. This garden is located in a small valley high in the mountains above the Min River. The collection is primarily of Rhododendron and associated species. The garden sited within a national park and is undergoing upgrading to make it more accessible to tourists.

Both gardens obtained BG-BASE as part of the Conservation of Chinese Rhodendrons Project run by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and funded by the Darwin Initiative of the UK Government. A 3 year project that has been introducing endangered Rhodendrons back into their original range within China and advising upon the horticultural and environmental management of the sites.

• Castlewellan Forest Park, in Castlewellan, Northern Ireland (November 1996). BG-BASE was installed to update and overhaul the existing card-based plant records system. BG-BASE will initially be used to manage the old collections within the Ainslie Garden of Castlewellan Forest Park, a walled garden inside the park.

User Profile

Sir Harold Hillier, a world-reknown plantsman, planted the Garden in the ground of his family home Jermyn's House, to which he moved in 1953. During his lifetime he achived his ambition to create in a single garden, one of the largest collections of hardy woody plants. The Garden now attracts more than 65,000 visitors a year.

The Gardens operate a 10-workstation Novell LAN connected to a 1 Gb file server. All stations have access to BG-BASE, but it is normally only used by 3-4 at a time. Most data entry is carried out by two staff members with the assistance of students and volunteer Friends. There are currently details of 41,000 ACCESSIONS, 39,000 PLANTS, and 14,000 NAMES on file. The IMAGES file is used to keep track of the Gardens' transparencies and drawings, while the library is being catalogued in the DATA SOURCES file. The Gardens have recently started their own herbarium, and the records are being stored in the SPECIMENS file. The PROPAGATIONS file is used to record treatments given to incoming material.

The Gardens actively uses BG-BASE in its practical operations, using the system to produce annual planting lists, surplus seedling lists, and lists from which volunteer surveyors can work. The NAMES file stores details not only of plants that are represented in the Gardens, but also of those that are sought, whether they are plants that are particularly rare, either in cultivation or in the wild, or plants belonging to one of the 11 National Collections the Gardens hold - Carpinus, Cornus, Corylus, Cotoneaster, Hamamelis, "Hillier plants", Ligustrum, Lithocarpus, Photinia, Pinus (excluding dward cultivars), and Quercus.

BG-BASE and Caribbean biodiversity

With the recent installations in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, BG-BASE has crossed the Kingdom line and is now functioning to handle zoological as well as botanical information. Various modifications have been made to the names file to handle the different rules of zoological nomenclature, and new features have been added to the specimens file to cope with practices employed in natural history museums and in the collection of marine organisms.

With the assistance of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Dominican Republic has established a program to increase the availability of information about biodiversity in its coastal zone. work has been carried out under the auspices of the Center for Marine Conservation (CMC) and the Association of Systematics Collections (ASC) to assess the state of the herbarium and natural history collections in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. One of the goals of the ASC work in Cuba has been to restore Cuba's access to systematics data, especially what is residing in US institutions. BG-BASE has been chosen to act as the respository of this information; once the work is completed, BG-BASE will be able to accept specimen-, taxon-, and literature-based data in electronic formats from other institutions. The WWW work mentioned earlier in this Newsletter will allow Caribbean institutions to make their data available to the widest possible user community.

Notes...

Starting with this issue, Technical Tips have been expanded to two pages and are now distributed as an insert to BG-BASE News. Only holders of technical support agreements will receive Technical Tips. All users and interested parties will continue to receive the regular newsletter.

Mark your calendars - the 7th annual BG-BASE users meeting will be held in New York City the week of May 27-30, 1997, in conjunction with the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (AABGA) annual conference. For more information about the AABGA conference, contact AABGA headquarters at [(610) 688-1120]

Should others at your institution see this newsletter? Please remember to pass it on!