Presentatie van Sander Pieterse (Naturalis Biodiversity, Stichting Xeno-canto voor Natuurgeluiden) over natuurhistorische bronnen over vogels en vogelgeluiden. Gegevens tijdens Europeana Sounds Wikipedia editathon, 10 januari 2015 bij Beeld en Geluid in Hilversum.
Vogels & geluiden: natuurhistorische bronnen in vogelvlucht (Europeana Sounds Wikipedia editathon, 10 januari 2015)
1. Vogels & geluiden
Natuurhistorische
bronnen in vogelvlucht
Sander Pieterse
@zzherc
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
www.naturalis.nl
Europeana Sounds Wikipedia editathon / Beeld en Geluid, 10 januari 2015
2. Overview presentatie
• Inleiding Nederlands
Soortenregister en
determinatiesleutels
(Naturalis)
• Greep uit digitale
vogelresources
(nationaal,
internationaal)
• Vogelgeluiden
(a.h.v. Xeno-canto)
3. Het Nederlands Soortenregister is…
• Nationale thesaurus meercellige planten, dieren
en schimmels
• Compleet, gestandaardiseerd, betrouwbaar,
actueel
• Nederlands grondgebied
• Alleen soorten vanaf 1758
• Geen soorten onder directe supervisie van de
mens
4. Het Nederlands Soortenregister is…
• Netwerk van specialisten
• Digitale flora en fauna – kennissysteem, inclusief
determinatietools
• Gevalideerde crowdsourced fotobibliotheek
• Speerpunt programma Natuur van Nederland
• Gelanceerd in 2005
18. Geluiden: www.xeno-canto.org
• Wereldwijde communitydatabase voor delen van
vogelgeluiden
• Voor vogelaars, ornithologen, liefhebbers, etc.
• Luisteren, opnemen en delen, maar ook…
• Discussiëren, determineren, verzamelen, gebruiken
19. Xeno-canto: historie en team
• 2005: website gelanceerd, focus op Neotropen
• 2005-2008: van Neotropen naar wereldwijd
• 2008: Stichting Xeno-canto voor Natuurgeluiden
• 2012: website/back-end herbouwd
• Vrijwilligerswerk: 3 NL’ers + lead programmer uit VS
• Gesponsord door Naturalis (server/hosting)
20. Xeno-canto: missie
• Populariseren van vogelgeluiden en
opnemen ervan wereldwijd
• Toegang tot vogelgeluiden verbeteren
• Kennis over vogelgeluiden verbeteren
• Opnamen worden gedeeld voor:
plezier/genot, educatie,
natuurbescherming en wetenschap
21. Xeno-canto: doel
• Ultieme vogelgeluidengids
• Alle ~30.000 taxa (i.p.v. alle
~10.000 soorten)
• Hun complete repertoires
• Alle geografische variatie
• Tijdens alle levensfases
22. Xeno-canto: manifesto
• Alle opnamen zijn welkom
• Open access via Creative Commons licenties
• Iedereen kan een waardevolle bijdrage leveren
• Onderbouwde meningen versus autoriteit
• Open source resources
33. Vogels & geluiden
Natuurhistorische
bronnen in vogelvlucht
Sander Pieterse
@zzherc
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
www.naturalis.nl
Europeana Sounds Wikipedia editathon / Beeld en Geluid, 10 januari 2015
Notas do Editor
Soortenregister = website toegankelijk via deze URL.
Kortweg, homepage, zoekschermen, verzamelpagina’s per soort / taxon met heterogene informatie.
Nationale thesaurus meercellige planten, dieren en schimmels van Nederland. Uitgangspunten:
Compleet, gestandaardiseerd, betrouwbaar, actueel
Nederlands grondgebied
Alle soorten vanaf 1758 (Systema naturae Linnaeus); geen (sub)fossiele soorten
Geen soorten onder directe supervisie van de mens (huisdieren, dierentuin, enz.)
Netwerk van specialisten
Ruim 100 specialisten, vaak verbonden aan PGO’s en andere organisaties. Gemanaged door eindredacteur die 1 dag in de week in dienst is om Soortenregister bij te houden.
Digitale flora en fauna – kennissysteem bestaande uit allerlei middels de thesaurus verknoopte informatie, inclusief tekstuele content en (sinds kort) determinatietools.
Gevalideerde crowdsourced fotobibliotheek van NL soorten.
Onderdeel van programma Natuur van Nederland.
Gelanceerd in 2005 in Naturalis, door toenmalige minister Cees Veerman.
Samenwerking tussen Naturalis, Ministerie van EZ, PGO’s en meer.
Soortenregister = website toegankelijk via deze URL.
Kortweg, homepage, zoekschermen, verzamelpagina’s per soort / taxon met heterogene informatie.
There are more memory organisations around the world dealing with curating nature sounds. Here’s a selection of the big players in the field, like the Macaulay Library of Cornell University, British Library and animal sounds archive of the natural history museum in Berlin. For comparison, I’ve listed rough estimates of their collection size below their logos on the slide.
In terms of quantity, you can see that Xeno-canto is the biggest collection when it comes to openly accesible bird sounds. It’s also the fastest growing one.
XC tries to seek collaboration with external parties where opportunities arise and we think it is beneficial for our end users. For example, we’ve collaborated with a couple of universities to host part of their collection. Naturalis has been a partner since the very beginning, taking care of our hosting/server costs.
Worldwide community-sourced database for sharing bird sounds
For anyone who likes to use these sounds: birdwatchers, nature enthusiasts, music producers, ornithologists, software developers
Listening to sounds, but also record and upload. Sort of a niche version of Soundcloud, if you will.
But XC is more than that…
Building a global database together, sharing opinions, helping one another with IDs, collecting and curating, creating new knowledge, and learning together.
A brief history of Xeno-canto.
2005: Website launched in May 2005, with focus on Neotropics.
2005-2008: Over the next few years gone global; Asia, Africa, Europe, etc. (December 2008).
October 2008: Xeno-canto Foundation for Nature Sounds, as legal body behind the website.
November 2012: website completely rebuilt by a community member
XC is run by 4 volunteers: 3 guys from the Netherlands (including me), and 1 guy - our lead programmer - from the US. We rarely meet and have only met our lead programmer once, as seen here: that’s co-founder Bob visiting Jonathon in Minneapolis.
Naturalis acts as main sponsor, covering hosting/server costs since the start
We leverage the evolving possibilities of the web and increased availability of cheap recording equipment, global internet access and storage.
Popularise bird/nature sounds (and the recording of it) across the world
Improve access to bird sounds
Increase knowledge of bird sounds
We provide a shared sense of purpose by opening up recordings for: enjoyment/pleasure, education, conservation, and science
Most of our users are self-motivated nature enthusiasts, pursuing their own goals. By doing so they are contributing to our larger, shared goal, which is building a sound collection of all global bird sounds, representing:
all taxa (not just all species)
their complete repertoires
all geographic variation
during all life stages (birds have to learn their songs, too!)
and slowly: temporal variation as well (evolution of bird song)
To organise this collection in such a way that XC becomes the number one sound guide.
All recordings are welcome
Recordings are shared under Creative Commons licenses (to promote open access and re-use)
Everyone can make a valuable contribution, by sharing recordings and opinions, identifying mystery recordings, or even helping out with programming or translating the site.
XC values reasoned opinions, not authority. Identification of recordings may always be challenged, discussed and revised, in a transparant fashion for all to see and trace.
Wherever possible, XC uses open source solutions.
Here’s a short look at our current state of affairs. Number of sounds, active recordists (top of the user engagement pyramid), percentage of species covered (around 85% of 10.518 species recognised on IOC list).
Graph with growth of collection per contintent.
So what’s in our collection?
Some species are well-repesented, such as Great Tit with over a 1.000 recordings.
Many rare species, such as a recording of the last wild Spix’s Macaw individual.
Newly discovered species: e.g. Scarlet-banded Barbet (now on cover of Birds of Peru Field Guide; we have its moment of discovery on tape!) and Cryptic Treehunter (named after a passed away XC member who first recorded the species).
Remote locations: e.g. Afghanistan, Somaliland, islands in the Pacific.
Digitised analog private collections such as the tape collection of Bas van Balen, a Dutch ornithologist specialising in Indonesia (from ‘80s and ‘90s).
We use a variety of Creative Commons Licenses. CC-BY-SA is the most open license we offer (though most community members still seem to prefer the non-commercial licenses). Part of our CC-BY-SA recordings are available through Wikimedia Commons.
We also offer a simple JSON API for developers.
Where has at least partially opening up our collection lead to so far?
Source for external sites and blogs (via e.g. embedding recordings).
Source for smartphone apps (via API).
Source for scientific research and articles (well over 500 hundred results on Google Scholar; an increase of about 100 results in the past half year!).
So let’s look at the community. With nichesourcing projects, it’s always a good idea to target existing communities. Nature enthusiasts are quite well organised in a whole network of subcommunities. These are usually on the radar of natural history museums like Naturalis in The Netherlands.
When we started XC in 2005, there was no centralized global bird sound community, so we basically had to try our luck at starting a new community.
By now, XC is an international project, with members from all over the globe.
They’re mainly bearded outdoor-loving men, but also a few women, luckily.
Birdwatchers, ornithologists, academics, tour leaders, sound producers, local nature guides, and so on.
We realize XC would be nowhere without this community. They get a strong voice, and we for example involve super users in big decisions.
I’ll show a few pages from the website to give you an idea of how it works.
First, the personal profile, which offers several options to customize the site.
Public profile with map and detailled statistics (providing instant feedback and a sense of progression to our users). It’s important to allow for autonomy and mastery in your design.
There are some very basic elements of gamification applied here, such as a leaderboard (global and per continent).