We, the symposium conveners Elspeth Haston (RBGE), Elizabeth Ellwood (iDigBio), and Deborah Paul (iDigBio) were thrilled (gulp!) when an originally-proposed half-day symposium turned into a full-day symposium at SPNHC 2014. The topic? - Progress in the Digitisation of Natural History Collections. Local SPNHC 2014 Conference organizers in Cardiff moved the conference pieces around until they just fit, in order to meet this community response to our session. Thanks Julian Carter, Caroline Buttler, et al at the Natural History Museum in Cardiff, Wales for making it possible to give all our presenters an opportunity to share their latest digitization developments!
From many countries and different organizations, over 165 people attended one or more talks in this symposium, some in-person, and others remotely via Adobe Connect software and Kevin Love’s (iDigBio) know-how. Our enthusiastic audience participation included astute, thought-provoking questions. Speakers from the US and the EU presented talks on a wide-range of topics including: 3-D imaging, barcodes, conveyor belts, data quality strategies, using OCR output to support better transcription and improve data quality, to new strategies for duplicate finding, data cleaning methods and much more.
Did you attend? Thanks! If you did, or are just jumping in now, we'd love to hear from you about what you’d like to learn more about next time we do this. If you missed it, or if you’d like to hear a talk again, look up a presenter’s contact information, see the attendee list, or see the presenter’s slides and participant conversations, we invite you to visit the SPNHC 2014 Digitization Wiki.
Check out the Progress in Digitisation photo album on the iDigBio Facebook page. See anyone you know?
A few links from the symposium talks to entice you...
ZooSphere http://360grad.biodiv.naturkundemuseum-berlin.de/
e-Recolnat http://recolnat.org/
JISC-funded project GB3D type fossils online: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/collections/jiscGB3DTypeFossils.html
Digitarium http://digitarium.fi/en
Silurian Reef Digitization https://www.fieldmuseum.org/science/blog/video-silurian-reef-database-pr...
The Virtually Browseable Collection: http://www.paleocentral.org/
BIOSpex https://biospex.org/
FilteredPush http://wiki.filteredpush.org/wiki/
Seaweed Collections Online http://seaweeds.myspecies.info/
Oh! Got SPNHC 2015 ideas? We’d love to hear them! Got a Workshop idea? a Symposium topic? Do let the organizers know. Next year, SPNHC 2015 is in Gainesville, hosted by the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH), the home of iDigBio. Hope to see you there!
