Rod Page
@rdmpage.bsky.social
Expat Kiwi, Professor of Taxonomy at Glasgow University, inclined to say that something sucks at every available opportunity. Biodiversity informatics, phylogeny, knowledge graphs. I also run the @evoldir.bsky.social bot.
Each year more content moves into the #publicdoman and hence @biodivlibrary.bsky.social can make more articles freely available. Today I've added articles from the Annales of @socentomolfr.bsky.social 1923-1928 to BioStor biostor.org/issn/0037-9271 and these will appear in BHL shortly.
September 25, 2025 at 3:54 PM
Each year more content moves into the #publicdoman and hence @biodivlibrary.bsky.social can make more articles freely available. Today I've added articles from the Annales of @socentomolfr.bsky.social 1923-1928 to BioStor biostor.org/issn/0037-9271 and these will appear in BHL shortly.
It’s not open access, but they do show most of it. This is what happens if I click on the link, notice at the end the content fades out and the paywall appears. I can only access the rest of the article by logging in to my Uni account.
August 9, 2025 at 4:24 PM
It’s not open access, but they do show most of it. This is what happens if I click on the link, notice at the end the content fades out and the paywall appears. I can only access the rest of the article by logging in to my Uni account.
Experimenting with using t-SNE to plot @boldsystems.bsky.social DNA barcodes in "sequence space" (in this case, defined by k-mer vectors). This example is bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/record/GMESB... where the BIN BOLD:ACP0173 looks to comprise two distinct clusters.
August 6, 2025 at 6:58 PM
Experimenting with using t-SNE to plot @boldsystems.bsky.social DNA barcodes in "sequence space" (in this case, defined by k-mer vectors). This example is bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/record/GMESB... where the BIN BOLD:ACP0173 looks to comprise two distinct clusters.
Just added a new feature to BOLD View (my alternative interface to @boldsystems.bsky.social ) that adds specimen lookjup in @gbif.org. If you see a catalogue number (such as "USNM ENT 01453986") you can click on it and a panel opens that shows that specimen in GBIF.
July 25, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Just added a new feature to BOLD View (my alternative interface to @boldsystems.bsky.social ) that adds specimen lookjup in @gbif.org. If you see a catalogue number (such as "USNM ENT 01453986") you can click on it and a panel opens that shows that specimen in GBIF.
All articles in "Genera Insectorum" from 1902 to 1970 have now been extracted in BioStor biostor.org/oclc/5316074 and are shown in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social. Some spectacular plates. HT to @bfly52.bsky.social for the metadata that made this task easier. #onearticleatatime
July 25, 2025 at 7:45 AM
All articles in "Genera Insectorum" from 1902 to 1970 have now been extracted in BioStor biostor.org/oclc/5316074 and are shown in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social. Some spectacular plates. HT to @bfly52.bsky.social for the metadata that made this task easier. #onearticleatatime
Finally picked up my copy of “Sir Graham Kerr and the flouring of Glasgow zoology”, a history of what is now part of @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk, assembled with much effort and love by Roger Downie.
June 30, 2025 at 12:26 PM
Finally picked up my copy of “Sir Graham Kerr and the flouring of Glasgow zoology”, a history of what is now part of @sbohvm.gla.ac.uk, assembled with much effort and love by Roger Downie.
If you like flies then @biodivlibrary.bsky.social has a treat for you. The Manual of Afrotropical Diptera is being added to BHL, and chapters are being extracted making it easier to navigate these large volumes. See www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/343508 and www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/343512
June 13, 2025 at 9:04 AM
If you like flies then @biodivlibrary.bsky.social has a treat for you. The Manual of Afrotropical Diptera is being added to BHL, and chapters are being extracted making it easier to navigate these large volumes. See www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/343508 and www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/343512
There are a couple of positive responses, and a few thoughtful ones, see below. There’s a lot of anti AI rage, which I think is misplaced.
June 11, 2025 at 9:13 AM
There are a couple of positive responses, and a few thoughtful ones, see below. There’s a lot of anti AI rage, which I think is misplaced.
SkyBLAST is indeed a "lightning fast" version of NCBI BLAST sky-blast.com. Like, really fast.
June 6, 2025 at 9:48 AM
SkyBLAST is indeed a "lightning fast" version of NCBI BLAST sky-blast.com. Like, really fast.
The more I look the more European taxa keep appearing in Madagascar in this @gbif.org metabarcoding dataset doi.org/10.15468/pad....
June 4, 2025 at 7:39 PM
The more I look the more European taxa keep appearing in Madagascar in this @gbif.org metabarcoding dataset doi.org/10.15468/pad....
Likewise a European fly Helina impuncta is also in Madagascar, based on DNA metabarcoding www.gbif.org/species/5069...
June 4, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Likewise a European fly Helina impuncta is also in Madagascar, based on DNA metabarcoding www.gbif.org/species/5069...
OK @gbif.org I'm confused. How come metabarcoding says a moth from Northern Europe and Canada is in Madagascar? #dnabarcoding This is a pretty striking distribution pattern.
June 4, 2025 at 2:42 PM
OK @gbif.org I'm confused. How come metabarcoding says a moth from Northern Europe and Canada is in Madagascar? #dnabarcoding This is a pretty striking distribution pattern.
Second session of #WOOC2025 about to start, in a significantly more stylish room @opencitations.bsky.social
May 29, 2025 at 7:15 AM
Second session of #WOOC2025 about to start, in a significantly more stylish room @opencitations.bsky.social
At #WOOC2025 in Bologna @opencitations.bsky.social first session about to start.
May 28, 2025 at 7:43 AM
At #WOOC2025 in Bologna @opencitations.bsky.social first session about to start.
Tweaking BOLD-View to link barcodes to @boldsystems.bsky.social datasets, some of which have some great images, e.g DS-NEOARMY bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/recordset/DS... #dnabarcodes
May 22, 2025 at 1:05 PM
Tweaking BOLD-View to link barcodes to @boldsystems.bsky.social datasets, some of which have some great images, e.g DS-NEOARMY bold-view-bf2dfe9b0db3.herokuapp.com/recordset/DS... #dnabarcodes
More messing about with interfaces to @biodivlibrary.bsky.social Using shaded bars to show how much of a scanned volume has been segmented into articles, e.g. the journal Mycotaxon bhl-light-806b8b6fa073.herokuapp.com/bibliography... This is one of the more challenging tasks in curating BHL.
May 20, 2025 at 5:38 PM
More messing about with interfaces to @biodivlibrary.bsky.social Using shaded bars to show how much of a scanned volume has been segmented into articles, e.g. the journal Mycotaxon bhl-light-806b8b6fa073.herokuapp.com/bibliography... This is one of the more challenging tasks in curating BHL.
Experimenting with new feature for @biodivlibrary.bsky.social BHL-Light. Scroll bar shows tick mark where an external website links to BHL page, clicking on tick takes you to external page, in this case for Sciomesa venata in www.afromoths.net. Interface partly inspired by Google Books.
May 16, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Experimenting with new feature for @biodivlibrary.bsky.social BHL-Light. Scroll bar shows tick mark where an external website links to BHL page, clicking on tick takes you to external page, in this case for Sciomesa venata in www.afromoths.net. Interface partly inspired by Google Books.
I'm having fun exploring ways to visualise the history of BINs in @boldsystems.bsky.social using #graphviz Below is the history of BOLD:AAH8697 which is a BIN highlighted by @rudolf-meier.bsky.social in doi.org/10.1111/cla..... Columns are time-slices and the coloured boxes are bins.
May 15, 2025 at 12:47 PM
I'm having fun exploring ways to visualise the history of BINs in @boldsystems.bsky.social using #graphviz Below is the history of BOLD:AAH8697 which is a BIN highlighted by @rudolf-meier.bsky.social in doi.org/10.1111/cla..... Columns are time-slices and the coloured boxes are bins.
I mean these insects are pretty, but not that pretty doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... The @GBIF model of assigning DOIs to every download is going to make the calculation of citation-based measures of impact *cough* interesting...
May 13, 2025 at 12:17 PM
I mean these insects are pretty, but not that pretty doi.org/10.5281/zeno.... The @GBIF model of assigning DOIs to every download is going to make the calculation of citation-based measures of impact *cough* interesting...
At this rate I'm going to need an AI to recognise barcodes (and other library stamps and stickers) so that they can be removed and not the AI that parses tables of contents 😕 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social
May 13, 2025 at 11:59 AM
At this rate I'm going to need an AI to recognise barcodes (and other library stamps and stickers) so that they can be removed and not the AI that parses tables of contents 😕 @biodivlibrary.bsky.social
Hey @opencitations.bsky.social I am getting this everytime I try and get citations for a DOI. Spinning and then nothing :(
May 12, 2025 at 8:26 PM
Hey @opencitations.bsky.social I am getting this everytime I try and get citations for a DOI. Spinning and then nothing :(
"Serket, The Arachnological Bulletin of the Middle East and North Africa" is now in BioStor with all articles defined, and all will appear in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social by tommorow biostor.org/issn/1110-502X. #spiders #arachnology
May 8, 2025 at 8:16 PM
"Serket, The Arachnological Bulletin of the Middle East and North Africa" is now in BioStor with all articles defined, and all will appear in @biodivlibrary.bsky.social by tommorow biostor.org/issn/1110-502X. #spiders #arachnology
Given recent developments with @biodivlibrary.bsky.social losing its hosting, the essay "Against infrastructure: global approaches to digital scholarly editing" doi.org/10.62637/sup... by Raffaele Viglianti and @gimenadelr.bsky.social in recent @scotunipress.bsky.social book seems timely...
May 6, 2025 at 1:36 PM
Given recent developments with @biodivlibrary.bsky.social losing its hosting, the essay "Against infrastructure: global approaches to digital scholarly editing" doi.org/10.62637/sup... by Raffaele Viglianti and @gimenadelr.bsky.social in recent @scotunipress.bsky.social book seems timely...
ALEC aims to make it easy to explore #wikidata content such as journals, articles, people, taxa, museums, etc. Examples shown below include cicadas, the late Norm Platnick, Acta Entomologica Sinica (=昆虫学报), and @nhmdk.bsky.social
May 5, 2025 at 1:36 PM
ALEC aims to make it easy to explore #wikidata content such as journals, articles, people, taxa, museums, etc. Examples shown below include cicadas, the late Norm Platnick, Acta Entomologica Sinica (=昆虫学报), and @nhmdk.bsky.social
The great split in the Wikidata graph has happened, separating scholarly articles from the rest of Wikidata. Hence apps querying articles in Wikidata need a rewrite. My little Wikidata browser "ALEC" has been updated to handle the graph split. So far things seem OK #sparql #wikidata #wikicite
May 5, 2025 at 1:32 PM