Pathfinder Develops and Launches PlantCollections.org to Enable Research into Complex Biological Relationships.
“Pathfinder’s Agile development methods coupled with an expert team have been key to the success and creation of a PlantCollections Portal presence on the web. The level of communication and support has been exceptional”
Boyce Tankersley
Chicago Botanic Garden
Challenge:
Currently, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 30% of plant species in the United States face extinction in the next 50 years. The data and information provided by PlantCollections.org will be crucial to supporting preservation efforts and promoting biodiversity. The Chicago Botanic Garden, in conjunction with 29 partners, needed to build an internet application to improve the process of collecting plants and address conservation issues, contribute to education and enable research into complex biological relationships. Previous attempts to create similar databases had been unsuccessful due to technology and support costs.
Solution:
Pathfinder leveraged Open Source software and standards to address these issues without the overhead of software licensing fees. The solution leverages Ruby on Rails, Ajax and other Open Source components to quickly build web applications that are easily extended to meet growing demand and end user requirements.
Pathfinder’s team moved PlantCollections from a prototype to a user-centric portal. Our designers identified the best approach to make it easy for eight different audience segments to find the information they need across this vast and valuable resource. Armed with the design and our Agile development methodology, we were able to quickly build a solid and sustainable web portal that is easy to use, maintain and support.
Impact:
PlantCollections brings together disparate data from 29 member organizations and 9 different database management applications, each using different forms, fields and taxonomies. Making the information easy to access and providing a unified view of data benefits us all by helping drive conservation efforts and promoting biodiversity.
About PlantCollections
The Chicago Botanic Garden worked in conjunction with the North American Plant Collections Consortium, a program of the American Public Gardens Association, the University of Kansas Biodiversity Research Center and Natural History Museum, Morphbank at the Florida State University School of Computational Sciences, Google Base, BG-BASE, Inc., the Beijing Botanical Garden and Pathfinder Development with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences (IMLS) and private donors.
Participating institutions include the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, Beijing Botanical Garden, Chenshen Botanical Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden, Ganna Walska Lotusland, Huntington Art Collections, Library and Botanical Gardens, Landis Arboretum, Mt. Cuba Center Inc, Missouri Botanical Garden, Nanjing Sun Yat Sen Memorial Botanical Garden, Norfolk Botanical Garden, North Carolina Arboretum, San Francisco Botanical Garden, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College, Shanghai Botanical Garden, The Morton Arboretum, UC Davis Arboretum, United States National Arboretum and University of Washington Botanic Gardens.