Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN)
The Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung (SGN) conducts research in bio- and geosciences within six research institutes and three natural history museums in Germany. The mission of the SGN is to make science and scientific findings accessible to the public through teaching, publishing, museums and special exhibitions in Frankfurt, Dresden, Görlitz and Tübingen. Senckenberg's research activity is divided into four large research fields: Biodiversity, Systematics and Evolution, Biodiversity and Environment, Biodiversity and Climate & Biodiversity and Earth System Dynamics.
With currently about 40 million objects/items in more than 200 collections the SGN has one of the largest scientific collections in Germany. The objects involve a herbarium, zoological, anthropological, paleontological and mineralogical collections plus a DNA Bank. SGN is part of the Leibniz association.
GFBio Data Center
The MS SQL based collection database SeSam is run by the SGN IT Department as part of the central Senckenberg IT infrastructure. SeSam is the core database for managing collection and observation data. It is supplemented by the Apache Solr based AQUiLA, providing a full text search service through a web-frontend. The SGN IT Department is in close collaboration with the data and modelling centre of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F).
Scientific data curation services (incl. taxonomic services)
The taxonomic expertise and interest is that of the SGN with its research departments.
Special expertise in various groups of invertebrates GBIF Node Invertebrates III (Crustaceae, Porifera, Cnidaria, Ctenophora, Tunicata and Bryozoa)
Participating in international cooperation projects such as DiSSCo and IPBES or EUdaphobase and also involved in the international LTER network (Long-Term Ecosystem Research).
The SGN has a special interest in data on specimens curated at the SGN.
The SGN has a special interest in data on research projects with scientists of the SGN involved.
Data domains
SGN has various interests in different data domains, including: Collection data, molecular data, observational data, environmental data, series of measurements and trait data.
IT services
Data submission and accession
- Collection Management System SeSam/AQUiLA
- Data hosting and import for Partner institutions
- Senckenberg provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) to support data archiving and access to research data.
- Senckenberg hosts a data repository also including earth, environmental and ecological research data
Data backup and archiving
- SGN has implemented an effective backup and archiving workflow
Data publication
- GBIF Data Publisher (Senckenberg)
- BioCASe Provider Software (BPS)
User services
Helpdesk and Workshops on demand