The California Academy of Sciences has databased a great deal of their entomological specimen data, but it's generally only available through their own website with no API and no machine-readable export functionality. This gem attempts to ameliorate the situation by scraping data and presenting it in a machine- readable format.

Since it is just a scraper it is brittle, but still, better than nothing.

This is a Ruby gem, so you'll need Ruby and RubyGems installed. Then:

gem install casento

or if you just want to build and install locally:

git clone git@github.com:kueda/casento.git
cd casento
gem build casento.gemspec
gem install casento-x.x.x.gem

casento help should get you started, but here are some ways I use it:

# List all records of Hemipenthes in California
casento checklist Hemipenthes --state California --country U.S.A.

# Export a checklist of all bee fly genera from California to CSV
casento checklist Bombyliidae --state California --country U.S.A. --rank genus -f csv > bombyliidae-genera-ca.csv