What it does...

    BioGeoMancer provides a georeferencing service for collectors, curators and users of natural history specimens. Locality information associated with a collection has traditionally been stored as a natural language description, in some cases accompanied by a set of map coordinates or a small map. In the absence of quantitative spatial data, it is often time-consuming to georeference a collection by hand. BioGeoMancer automates as much of the process as possible. It is still up to the data providers and the data users to ensure that information they provide is scientifically sound. In its current state, Biogeomancer can parse English language place name descriptions and provide a set of latitude/longitude coordinates associated with that description. It provides offset calculations for when a collection is georeferenced a given distance and cardinal direction from the nearest named place. Common expressions include:

• 2.4 km WNW of Pandemonium
• Springfield, 22 miles E
• Springfield, 0.5 mi. E of Pandemonium

    BioGeoMancer will not geocode in the sense of ESRI, Mapquest, or Yahoo. It is not meant to provide map references for street addresses. It is designed to handle data commonly linked to natural history collections. Georeferencing specimen locality data is carried out in two parts, which to some extent are iterative. First, geoparsing involves evaluating the locality string for possible place names, and determining spatial relationships (at this stage very simple relationships) between any identified places. Second, place names are checked against gazetteer data, and coordinates returned. There are a number of gazetteer services extant, and BioGeomancer will likely be a client of gazetteer services like the Alexandria Digital Library Gazetteer (ADL). What sets BioGeoMancer apart is that it performs geoparsing. Biogeomancer appears to be the first of it's kind available to researchers and the public through the internet.
    Currently two versions of the Biogeomancer service are active. One is a HTTP/CGI interface that accepts delimited data and returns the results as delimited georeferenced data. We are working with the Mammal Networked Information Systems (MaNIS) group to provide this interface as an automated first cut on georeferencing specimen data. MaNIS data providers have divied up the work geographically and provide error calculation as well as other metadata with their georeferences. By using automated georeferencing to pre-process records, time and effort are saved, but georeferences are carefully reviewed. Non-MaNIS georeferencers may find this interface useful as well.
    A SOAP/XML version of Biogeomancer is currenly in development, and is meant to provide an interoperable solution for multiple geoparsing/georeferencing requirements. Writing a SOAP client for this interface can be as simple as ten lines of code using the SOAPLite module in Perl. Biogeomancer's default single georeference form acts as such client of the BioGeoMancer SOAP server. Aditional information on BioGeoMancer SOAP services will soon be available.