GFBio's connected Data Centers provide access to a variety of data archives. The VAT system allows users to access these archives directly. This makes it easier to access data without having to download it themselves. In addition, users can map the data together with other data sources in the VAT system.
In the background, the VAT system harvests all ABCD data from the GFBio Search Index every night. Thus, updates to the ABCD data are available in the VAT system the next day.
To find the ABCD data, users can click on the + button in the data menu. This opens a dialog where users can select the GFBio ABCD Datasets menu item. This will show all ABCD datasets that are available in the VAT system.
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Users can select the data they are interested in by clicking on the dataset. This will load all occurrences from the selected dataset into the VAT system as a new layer.
The data is displayed on the map as clustered points and can then be used like any other data in the VAT system. Zooming in will dissolve the clusters and show the individual occurrences. Users can also open the data table to see more attributes of the occurrences.
Some ABCD datasets contain links to multimedia items. These can be images, videos, or audio files. Users can click on the multimedia item in the data table to open it in a new dialog. For instance, when the item is an image, it will be displayed directly in the VAT system.
The data table will show at most three links for clustered occurrences. As a users, you can zoom in to see more items.
To cite the data, users can click on the Show Provenance icon in the context menu. This will open a table that shows the citation for the data.
The table has three columns: Citation, License, and URI. The Citation column contains the citation for the data. The License column contains the license under which the data is available. The URI column contains the URI to the license file.