The Specify Project is finalizing our Specify 5-to-Specify 6 conversion tool this week. The application will map between the two schemas and copy existing records from 5 to 6. We made substantial changes to Specify's database design for paleontology to reflect paleo concepts of time, space, and collecting. Our work on the converter is addressing those changes, so that Specify paleo collections will upgrade to 6 smoothly. We are also testing a new minor Specify update which should be released next week.

We are noticing in our e-mails and helpdesk calls that Specify WorkBench may not be receiving as much action as it deserves for data entry. If you are experimenting with entering data directly into Specify 6's data forms, consider the WorkBench for new data entry. It has many features that speed data input and allow checking, validating and georeferencing records in batches before automatically uploading them into your database. Using the WorkBench is a great way to monitor progress and deal with data in simple spreadsheet-like batches, before pushing the button to make the records a permanent part of your database. A spreadsheet data entry tool was high on the list of needs we analyzed from Specify 5 users; we think you will find that the WorkBench could be an efficient and an integral part of your data entry workflows.

We are also working on our web interface which will be released in Specify 6.1 later this summer. We will use the GBIF Internet Publishing Toolkit (IPT) as Specify's HTML and XML interface to the web. The IPT is an impressive piece of software that generates web pages for searching collections, for mapping data points in web pages and for visualizing collection statistics. The IPT also comes with a built-in TAPIR provider, which we will use to replace DiGIR as Specify's protocol for serving XML Darwin Core (Collection Object) records to GBIF and the various disciplinary and consortia portals. We're pretty excited about the being able to leverage GBIF's IPT package; it will allow us to focus more of our engineering resources on other enhanced internet integration functions.