Internet of Samples: iSamples
Toward an Interdisciplinary Cyberinfrastructure for Material Samples
Showcase: Real Samples from the Collection
The Internet of Samples (iSamples) is a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project funded by the National Science Foundation to design, develop, and promote service infrastructure to uniquely, consistently, and conveniently identify material samples, record metadata about them, and persistently link them to other samples and derived digital content, including images, data, and publications.
iSamples integrates data from four major scientific repositories:
- SESAR — Earth science samples (rocks, minerals, sediments, soils)
- OpenContext — Archaeological and cultural heritage materials
- GEOME — Genomic and biological specimens
- Smithsonian — Natural history museum collections
The project uses geoparquet files + DuckDB-WASM for efficient, browser-based data access and analysis — no server required.
- iSamples Full Dataset: ~280 MB wide format, 6.7M samples
- Available via: Cloudflare R2 with HTTP range requests
- Interactive tools: Progressive Globe for visual exploration, Interactive Explorer for search and filtering
All analysis happens in your browser. Only the data you need is downloaded — typically less than 1 MB for initial exploration.
- Universal access — No installation, works in any modern browser
- Fast analysis — 5-10x faster than downloading full datasets
- Memory efficient — Analyze 300MB datasets using less than 100MB browser memory
- Minimal transfer — Only download the columns and rows you need
- Reproducible — Share a URL and anyone can see exactly what you see
