About Biologer
Biologer started as local initiative at biologer.org, but quickly became regional, including more Eastern Europe countries. As the project grew we decided for biologer.org to metamorphose into a place describing the project (i.e. this very page you read), providing taxonomic backbone and data aggregator. The places reserved for our local communities are still the same and you are free to use Biologer software for your projects and ideas.
Here you can find basic info about the project. If you would like to contribute to the software, report bugs, propose new features or help in software localisation (translation) there is a dedicated page for this. Note that Biologer is free software, published under MIT license, thus its complete source code is available in Git. Find more on the Biologer history here).
Project Biologer
In Short...
The Biologer project was created as interactive platform with free content, intended for collecting and digitalising the knowledge about biological diversity of Eastern Europe. The platform is based on using and developing Biologer software and voluntary work of the Biologer community.
Biologer community, standing in the basis of Biologer project, is consisted of the Project team and the Local communities. Project team works on software development, organisation and structuring the data, project promotion and legislative. Project team is made of people from the Organisations that support the work and development of Biologer. Local communities are taking active role in collecting, verifying and presenting the data about geographical distribution of the organisms in nature. Each local Biologer platform (e.g. biologer.hr, biologer.rs or biologer.ba) has its own Local community made of Administrators, Editors and Users.
If you consider joining us, check the Privacy policy that is the same across our official Local communities.
Biologer is an initiative, not an organisation!
You could realise by now that there is not a single Organisation standing behind Biologer. But this only means that every interested organisation can join the cause, support Project team and propose new members for the team. Remember that you can find more details about Project team, Organisations, individuals and financial support behind the project.
Mission
Empowering Biologer community and developing the software to create the biggest database about biological diversity in the region. Fuelled by devotion of taxonomic experts and motivated development team to enable collecting, verification and presentation of the valid data, enhance the platform itself and improve the overall user experience. Take active role in nature conservation and motivate as many enthusiasts to join the Biologer community.
Vision
Our vision is to be a part of Biologer community that works on further development and enhancement of the biggest database on biodiversity in the region, to work on software development and to provide the best conditions for the Biologer community.
Biologer Software
Biologer platform for local communities
Biologer communities and their users are the most important part of Biologer. A community is hosted at its own server running Biologer web software, which is the initial and the core part of Biologer. It is used for collecting data in certain region through online data entry form, import field observations or gather literature records. It also provides management for users, API for communication with other Biologer software and options for presenting and exporting collected data. That being said, Biologer web could be used on its own with no other components.
Official Biologer communities could work together on taxonomic backbone, resulting in more uniform data and single platform for data overview and export (see the next chapter).
If you would like to know more about our official local communities, there is a separate page for this.
Biologer taxonomic backbone
Biologer Taxa is our attempt to provide unified species names and descriptions across all the local Biologer communities. At the same time, Biologer taxa serves as an aggregator database, collecting free data from all the Biologer communities. We plan to provide simple interface to browse, download or share these data with larger aggregators. Note that data sharing is defined at the local community level, thus if a user from certain community restricts the data it will not be shared elsewhere.
Biologer apps for Andriod and iOS
Biologer apps are designed for collecting species observations from the field and it is our preferred way of collecting the data. The app provides some automation, such as collecting date, time, coordinates and coordinates accuracy for each individual observation. And this really makes a difference when analysing the data and presenting the results.
Funding and Support
Biologer is lead by people from the Project team. Project team is delegated by Organisations, while Organisations are supported from various sources and provide Project team with required funds or resources. We are grateful for support received from foundations, organisations and individuals. We would like to give our acknowledge in a page dedicated to our friends.