Social Software to Facilitate Knowledge Discovery from Scanning Electron Micrographs

Scientific fields of study such as astrobiology, nanotechnology, medical biotechnology, and cave and karst science involve the study of images and associated biological, physiochemical, and geological data. Making these kinds of datasets available for analysis and curation by the scientific community is key to fostering multidisciplinary analysis and knowledge discovery.

The goal of this project is to design and develop an online workspace that enables scientists to collaboratively view, analyze, and annotate such datasets. Funded by AISTI, a team of information scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of New Mexico, and the Alliance for Information Science and Technology Innovation has designed a collaborative workspace using a joint implementation of Drupal and Gallery to view images and promote a discussion of features observed in the images. The prototype contains scanning electron micrographs of karst and cave samples. The target users are the interdisciplinary community of scientists who study karst samples to learn more about critical biological and geological processes and the microbial communities often found in karst terrain. Testing is currently underway with students at New Mexico Tech’s Cave and Karst Program. The prototype can inform the design and development of collaborative workspaces in other interdisciplinary fields.