Interlinking between IBVS and WFPDB
by
Andras Holl
Konkoly Observatory
Coauthors: M. Tsvetkov (Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), K. Tsvetkova (Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), D. Kaglarsky (Space Research Institute, Bulgarian Acad) and K. Stavrev (Institute of Astronomy, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)

We describe a pilot project for creating links between databases (Wide-Field Plate Database, WFPDB) and electronic journals (Information Bulletin on Variable Stars, IBVS). The project aims closer connections between scientific papers and the data they are based upon. The merits of a paper can be evaluated better (both before and after publication) if the data used is accessible, which gives a possibility of its re-use - one of the goals of the Virtual Observatory.

The observational data archiving in astronomy is well established for large (mainly space-born) projects. Archives can be easily built for Big Science (e.g. MAST at STScI, with literature links described by Padovani (2002). Accomazzi et al. (2004) describe possible standards to refer to data stored in archives. Another possibility for data archiving is given by the journals in which the research paper, based on the given dataset, is published. Data tables associated to the A A papers are being archived at CDS. IBVS archives data tables along with papers (Holl, 2004).

In IBVS there are published papers based on photographic plate material. As the WFPDB (Tsvetkov et al., 1994) is a database storing meta-data on existing all over the world photographic observations (more than 2 200 000 plates in 414 archives), as well as digitized plate images (in the WFPDB version installed in Sofia), we started a pilot project to explore possibilities of interlinking the electronic IBVS with the WFPDB. This project was facilitated by the fact that we scanned with the UMAX flatbed scanner selected plates from the Konkoly Observatory plate collection with 600 dpi resolution as preview plate images and with 1600 dpi as real plate scans. On IBVS side, auxiliary files (tables) were created for some papers with links to the WFPDB entries of the plate material identified in the database. On WFPDB side a possibility of adding publication information (if available) to the database is investigated.

Links:

http://www.konkoly.hu/IBVS/IBVS.html http://www.konkoly.hu/cgi-bin/IBVSetable?1456-t3.tex http://www.skyarchive.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ harnad/Temp/data-archiving.htm

References:

Accomazzi, A., Eichhorn, G., 2004, Publishing Links to Astronomical Data On-line, ADASS XIII, ASP Conf. Ser., Vol. 314, p. 181. http://adass.org/adass/proceedings/adass03/P2-20/

Holl, A., 2004, Electronic journals and VO techniques, iAstro Workshop at RAL, Oct. 14-15., 2004, http://www.konkoly.hu/staff/holl/RAL/ral.html.

Padovani, P., 2002, News from the Multi-Mission Archive at STScI (MAST), STScI Newsletter, Vol. 19, No. 3., p. 9.

Tsvetkov, M.K., Stavrev, K.Y., Tsvetkova, K.P., Ivanov, P.V., Iliev, M.S., 1994, Proc. IAU Symp. 161 Ästronomy from Wide-Field Imaging", eds. H.T. MacGillivray, E.B. Thomson, B.M. Lasker, I.N. Reid, D.F. Malin, R. M. West and H. Lorenz (Kluwer, Dordrecht), p. 359.

Date received: March 24, 2005