Stable collection identifiers

Natural history collections are estimated to hold more than 2.5 billion specimens worldwide, a major proportion of which is owned by CETAF organisations. Being the only physical evidence of the past occurrence of organisms in space and time and therefore a tremendously important fundament for biodiversity research, it is crucial that biological collection objects can be consistently referenced with globally unique and stable identifiers. Ideally, such as system has a mechanism for resolving identifiers so that Users and software systems are automatically redirected to images, websites or metadata for the specimens of interest. CETAF has now decided to cut the Gordian knot and implements in a collaboration between CETAF-ISTC and the 7th Framework project pro-iBiosphere a simple and future-oriented identifier system based on HTTP-URIs and Linked Data principles. The system fulfils the requirements for specimen identifiers and build a bridge to rapidly developing semantic web technology.