Description: In times of whole city centres being available by a mouse click in 3D to virtually walk through, reality sometimes becomes neglected. The reality of scientific sample collections not being digitised to the essence of molecules, isotopes and electrons becomes unbelievable to the upgrowing generation of scientists. Just like any other geological institute the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research GEOMAR accumulated thousands of specimen. The samples, collected mainly during marine expeditions, date back as far as 1964. Today GEOMAR houses a central geological sample collection of at least 17 000 m of sediment core and more than 4 500 boxes with hard rock samples and refined sample specimen. This repository, having been dormant, missed the onset of the interconnected digital age. Physical samples without barcodes, QR codes or RFID tags need to be migrated and reconnected, urgently. In our use case, GEOMAR opted for the International Geo Sample Number IGSN as the persistent identifier. Consequentially, the software CurationDIS by smartcube GmbH as the central component of this project was selected. The software is designed to handle acquisition and administration of sample material and sample archiving in storage places. In addition, the software allows direct embedding of IGSN. We plan to adopt IGSN as a future asset, while for the initial inventory taking of our sample material, simple but unique QR codes act as “bridging identifiers” during the process. Currently we compile an overview of the broad variety of sample types and their associated data. QR-coding of the boxes of rock samples and sediment cores is near completion, delineating their location in the repository and linking a particular sample to any information available about the object. Planning is in progress to streamline the flow from receiving new samples to their curation to sharing samples and information publically. Additionally, interface planning for linkage to GEOMAR databases OceanRep (publications) and OSIS (expeditions) as well as for external data retrieval are in the pipeline. Looking ahead to implement IGSN, taking on board lessons learned from earlier generations, it will enable to comply with our institute’s open science policy. Also it will allow to register newly collected samples already during ship expeditions. They thus receive their "birth certificate" contemporarily in this ever faster revolving scientific world.

Description: In a modern research environment, physical samples are often treated as a burden, to be stored and forgotten but when their existence is digitalised and connected to the underlying metadata it becomes a great resource for present and future generations of researchers. This value is further expanded if the information is easily accessible for the research community, particular by offering intelligent search options, interconnection, extraction of data files etc. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research has accumulated thousands of biological and geological samples, collected mainly during marine expeditions but also from time series and experiments. Samples date back as far as 1964. Today, the biological collection comprises roughly 180.000 samples (mainly fish and plankton) in formaldehyde as well as a large amount of cryofrozen materials. The core and rock repository holds a collection of about 4000 sediment cores totaling 30.000 core sections and more than 5000 boxes with hard rock samples and refined sample specimens. We have set ourselves the task to curate all these materials and connect them with sufficient metadata in order to make them searchable and, more importantly, findable. The Ocean Science Information System at GEOMAR (OSIS) joins all kind of data resulting from the institute's sea-going expeditions and land-based projects. It is designed for data exchange in the context of these expeditions and experiments, and during a research project's moratorium it supports scientists in documenting provenance of their research data and ultimately their publication. OSIS also serves as a hub for detailed information, metadata and references to peer-review journal publications. The metadata in OSIS are publicly accessible and the system is interlinked to the institutional repository OceanRep as well as several other data archives and databases. It will act as a first entry point for scientists to identify samples by their metadata even before contacting the appropriate curator to inquire sample accessibility and conditions. In context with the physical specimens, OSIS provides linkage to more specific sample databases. Currently we connect biological samples collected on a research vessel via the expedition metadata to their current storage locations on land, which will be further refined to connecting single ship-based sampling stations with the storage position of individual samples. Moreover, for geological samples (sediment cores) metadata from OSIS are made available for further in-house use by the software CurationDIS from smartcube GmbH. The sediment core specific details are managed by the curation software which is also used to provide a persistent identifier (IGSN). Future plans include connecting rock samples in a similar structure as sediment cores.