iSamples (Internet of Samples): Cyberinfrastructure to support transdisciplinary use of material samples

Lightning talk for the US National Science Foundation CSSI PI Meeting, July 2022.

The Internet of Samples (iSamples) is a multidisciplinary project developing transdisciplinary infrastructure services to identify material samples, record metadata about them, and link with other samples, derived data, and published research results. 

iSamples consists of two key components: iSamples-Core, a core data model and accompanying taxonomies providing a common, extensible mechanism for describing physical samples; and iSamples-in-a-Box (iSB), a containerized, standalone system that enables creation of identifiers and associated metadata, metadata management, sample identifier resolution, and discovery of samples.

iSB is typically deployed in proximity with an existing collection to provide a common iSamples-Core view of physical sample records and expose consistent service interfaces to facilitate open human and programmatic access. iSB may be deployed in a hierarchy, with aggregator instances accumulating content, and further presenting that content to other instances. All instances provide common functionality and may be configured to support domain extensions to the iSamples-Core model. In this manner, the iSamples infrastructure provides a consistent, general view across all physical sample records, while also enabling domain specific views.