ScioQualis
ScioQualis.com is Natural History Collections Management Software in the Cloud.
Our mission is to help you precisely record, efficiently manage, easily retrieve and safely store your natural history collections data, consistent with current standards. We provide scalable and reliable Software as a Service tools that resolve the technical challenges that hinder the digitization of some collections. Its geo-redundant cloud storage architecture ensures Scio Qualis is capable of managing the largest collections. Yet, the value of Scio Qualis really benefits smaller collections, which often lack the financial resources to provide a high level of expertise in both digitization and data management.
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ScioQualis Software Development Blog
Specifically, our tools enhance coordination and networking among collections and curators while simultaneously lowering the barriers to finding and retaining critical IT expertise. Scio Qualis provides the core architecture and cyber infrastructure that gives collection owners/administrators the resources they require to improve the accessibility of collections to the public and easily exchange digital data.
Our collaborative solutions integrate ancillary material into the digitization process and leverage technology improvements to expedite imaging. Scientists, researchers, and many serious hobbyists devote considerable effort to the care and curation of biological collections. Scio Qualis delivers a way to efficiently manage the data associated with these collections. This facilitates taxonomy while dramatically reducing the costs associated with managing IT infrastructure.
We remove, or at least drastically reduce, the burden of providing a Web-accessible interface using shared standards and formats. This affords collections curators more time and money that can instead be dedicated to the production and accuracy verification of actual content.
What Can I Do in ScioQualis.com?
• Manage your collections data - Collection Events (field trips), Occurrence/Specimen data, Locality (Higher/Lower Geography), Citations, People (who collected/identified/prepared), Identifications/Annotations/Nomenclature, Taxon classification, Storage, Images, and more.
• Upload photos - Images can be associated with Occurrences, Events, or Taxa. Even better, we automatically extract EXIF data in images for use in defining locality. If you have a GPS-enabled phone/tablet, recording the location of an image just got way easier!
• Manage security - Just because your collection is managed online does not mean everyone gets access to it. There is extensive security and an entire document to explain how that works. For now, just know that a collection owner must specifically grant other Scio Qualis users access to their collection before anyone can see the data. Beyond that, there are multiple levels of security (Contributor, Reviewer, Reader, etc.). In fact, specific occurrence and lower geography records can be individually secured, if needed. So, if you don't want even a collection contributor to see where a particular endangered species was observed you have that level of control!
• Educate - Only a fraction of the world's species have been identified owing to insufficient funding and a shortage of taxonomists. Help us reverse the dying science of taxonomy. There is a reason why we offer free trial accounts to the community; they are perfect for educators and students. (See Free Trial Account)
• Upcoming enhancements - Loans and Exchanges, audio and other media support, Reviews, Distribution maps, automated linking of your collection to online portals.
• Feedback - Tell us how to make Scio Qualis even better. We listen and respond to what the community needs and use that to drive future development. So, please, even if it's just a quick bug report or kudos, let us know what you think, what works, and what doesn't!
• Resolve Unique Identifiers - Although the general public does not have access to your data, there is an easy way for non-Scio Qualis users to resolve unique identifiers (LSID, GUID, URI, URN, URL and Others). Upon resolution, the user is shown what collection(s) have a reference to that unique identifier and what type/kind of entity it resolves to (Specimen, Identification, Citation, Photo, etc.). They are also provided with the contact information that the collection administrator chooses to provide.
• Print labels - As small as insect labels, as numerous as annotation labels, with barcodes, duplicate copies, and even custom labels are available.