Collecting and integrating biodiversity informatics data from diverse websites and transforming these data into the formats accepted by the analysis tools takes considerable resources.

Semantic Web tools such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) make it easier for computers to interpret the meaning of data items. Life Sciences Identifiers (LSIDs) are another Semantic Web product that allows information resources to be uniquely named and easily located.

Nala is a Semantic Web data capture tool that we have developed to demonstrate how Semantic Web technologies, in particular, RDF, OWL and LSIDs, may be used to improve the process of data capture and integration.

Nala is a Mozilla Firefox web browser extension, similar to Piggy Bank, which allows users to capture and integrate data while browsing the Web. Nala looks for data that may be acquired and transformed into RDF from web pages that are browsed. When such data are detected, the user is given the option to acquire, transform it into RDF format and store it in a repository called an RDF triple store. Data in the repository may then be integrated using OWL vocabularies such as Dublin Core or the TDWG Ontology and LSID Vocabularies and exported in CSV and MS Excel formats.