Keys and visualisation project

The FSC Tomorrow's Biodiversity project, which ran between 2013 and 2017 developed a set of tools for implementing multi-access keys and other ID resources which was originally called the 'Tom.bio ID Visualisation Framework', but has now become the 'FSC Identikit' and has rolled into the five-year HLF-funded BioLinks project (2018-2022) with the support of a year's continuation funding (through 2018) from Esmée Fairbairn. Find out more about FSC Identikit here.

FSC punched-card multi-access keyThe research & consultation phases of Tomorrow’s Biodiversity highlighted the unfulfilled potential of computer-based multi-access keys for biological identification and considerable interest amongst biological recorders in seeing them more widely available.

FSC was involved in the development of multi-access keys in their early days - even before the advent of widespread access of computers - for example by producing a novel punch-card key to Grasses. In the early 1990s, when computers became accessible to home users, we published a computer-based multi-access key for British Carex sedges for IBM-compatible PCs and BBC microcomputers. However FSC did not maintain an interest in this area of development until now.

It seems certain that recent technological advances in user-interface and hardware technology, such as mobile devices, have created an environment in which multi-access keys will, at last, start to realise some of their potential.