Sharing images, sounds and videos on GBIF

GBIF does not host original multimedia files and pictures cannot be uploaded directly to the platform.

Supported multimedia

The following media types and formats can be shared on GBIF.

Media types

Publishers can share any type of media defined by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. The recommended terms are:

File formats

The file format should be provided as an IANA Media Type (formerly MIME Type), for example image/jpeg or audio/flac. The format should correspond to the type above.

The IANA Media Type list (formerly MIME types) lists all recognized values.

If the format is text/html, the media is interpreted as a reference link instead of an associated media.

GBIF currently integrates only images (StillImage), sounds (Sound), video (MovingImage) or combinations of the three. For all the other media types, users must click on the links given with each record to view the content.

How to publish media in a Darwin Core Archive

GBIF does not host original multimedia files hence publishers cannot upload pictures or audio files directly to GBIF. Media files must be hosted on another system, and publishers should provide a URL for each media file they wish to make available.

Sharing URLs

When sharing URLs, publishers should keep the following points in mind:

  1. The URL provided must be a direct link to the file. For example: https://ipt.gbif.org/media/UAIC1008871_X.jpg.

  2. Images embedded on web pages like https://ipt.gbif.org/media/viewer/UAIC1008871_X.html will not render on GBIF but can be provided in addition to the direct link.

  3. The file extension does not always have to be specified in the URL (see for example the URLs provided with this occurrence from The Hemiptera collection (EH) of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle).

  4. GBIF resizes images for thumbnails and gallery views, but links to the best resolution image on individual occurrence pages. Publishers should provide the best resolution possible.

  5. GBIF caches images so changes in the media should resolve in a new image URL, otherwise, the image link will render the previous version of the media.

  6. There are no size or resolution restrictions when sharing media URLs with GBIF.

Simplest method: dwc:associatedMedia

The simplest way to share media is to use the associatedMedia field. Since this term belongs to the Darwin Core Occurrence, publishers do not need to create a second file for multimedia. In other words, publishers can have both their occurrences and images, sounds or videos in the same file.

This field can handle one or several URLs separated by space-pipe-space:  | .

For example:

However, this method does not allow any metadata to be associated with the media (title, license, author, etc.). It also requires the URL to have a common file extension like .jpg, .jpeg, .png or .tiff.

Extensions: Audiovisual Media Description

Using extension files is a better way to share images, sounds or videos, and extensions can currently be shared with the two dataset classes: Checklist and Occurrence.

“Extension” files support the exchange of additional, described classes of data that relate to the core data type (Occurrence or Taxon). An extension record points to a record in the core data file." — definition from the Darwin Core Archive – How-to Guide.

GBIF currently supports two types of extensions:

Both extensions will allow publishers to share detailed information about media such as creator, description, license, etc. However, the Audiovisual Media Description is more exhaustive.

Regardless of the extension chosen, publishers need to generate a file containing at least:

  1. unique identifiers linking the multimedia to the core Occurrence or Checklist row

  2. the multimedia type (dc:type)

  3. the file format (dc:format)

  4. the link to the media file (dc:identifier for Simple Multimedia or ac:accessURI for Audiovisual Media Description)

This file should be mapped with the proper terms and integrated into the Darwin Core Archive. For examples, see the data blog on multimedia sharing.

How to publish media outside of Darwin Core Archives

This part of the documentation is not exhaustive.

Publishers can publish resources on GBIF using alternatives to Darwin Core Archives.

See, for example, the two systems below:

The mapping of media fields between ABCD standards (used by BioCASe) and Darwin Core terms are covered in this blog post from 2014:

ABCD 2.06

ABCD 2.06 uses the unit MultiMediaObject subelements instead. There are:

  1. File and webpage URLs (FileURI, ProductURI).

  2. The description (Comment).

  3. The license (License/Text, TermsOfUseStatements).

  4. An indication of the MIME type (Format).

Symbiota documents how to submit and upload images on any Symbiota portal here. To make the images accessible from GBIF, publishers must follow these instructions.

Choose a license

The license field is free text. However, GBIF strongly encourages publishers to set up their licenses in a machine-readable format.

For example: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

All occurrence records on GBIF have one of the three following licenses:

  • CC0, for data made available for any use without any restrictions

  • CC BY, for data made available for any use with appropriate attribution

  • CC BY-NC, for data made available for any non-commercial use with appropriate attribution

Although multimedia licenses do not have to match the associated occurrence license, publishers could consider choosing one of them.

Where to host images and other media

Most publishers host their multimedia files on institutional systems, but some use third-party or cloud platforms.

We advise against using iNaturalist.org to host the images for a dataset. Since the iNaturalist portal makes its Research-grade Observations available on GBIF, this would generate duplicate occurrences.

If publishers are publishing a dataset through an IPT, they can consider hosting multimedia files on the same server. The images can be stored in a media folder and shared using the web server (see this example). Publishers who are not publishing with their own IPT should contact their IPT administrator.