by C. Skema, Anne Barber, and Tim Block

Pacarana (Dinomys branickii)

David F. Schmidt, USNM Dinomys branickii, Smithsonian Institution, NMNH, Mammals
 

Dear iDigBio Enthusiasts,

Prologue: Many of us in the ADBC world look for ways to expand the community of users of museum collections data and to increase the ways in which collections data are used. Recently, in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (TrEE), an opinion piece was published by Scott A. Morrison, et al. titled "Equipping the 22nd-Century Historical Ecologist." In this paper, Morrison, et al.

Participants in the iDigBio supported Digitizing Mollusks workshop.

The iDigBio supported “Digitizing Mollusks” workshop was held immediately prior to the American Malacological Society meeting in Newark, Delaware on July 15-17, 2017.  Thirty-eight collections professionals from 24 established and developing mollusk collections gathered to discuss the status of Mollusk collection digitization in North America and abroad.

What is NMITA?

Contributed by: Teresa Iturriaga, Rhianna Baldree, Alex Kuhn, Andrew Miller

Mycologists long to collect
areas remote to most men
where fungi today may thrive
keeping plants, trees, and cycles alive.

iDigBio staff members Bruce MacFadden, Libby Ellwood, and Molly Phillips attended the 2017 National Science Teachers Association National Meeting held on March 30-April 2 in the L.A. Convention Center in downtown Los Angeles. The conference was massive – attended by thousands of K-college science teachers from around the country and world.

The Society of Herbarium Curators and iDigBio are pleased to announce a 6-week "Strategic Planning for Herbaria” short course.

Take this opportunity to introduce new purpose and excitement into your organization. Learn how to relate your collection’s compelling vision to stakeholders and communicate long-term objectives and strategies to administrators.  

Dear iDigBio Enthusiasts,

The Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections Annual Summit, hosted by iDigBio, took place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at

iDigBio had a blast at ICE XXV International Congress of Entomology, held September 25-30, in Orlando, Florida.. The event brought together thousands of scientists from around the world under the theme “Entomology without Borders.” iDigBio staff participated in two symposia, the Insect Expo, and hosted the iDigBio booth in the ICE Exhibit Hall.

Specimens collected in Nicaragua by American mycologist Charles Leonard Smith in the late 19th century were thought to have been lost for over 100 years.Through records created on the MyCoPortal, Gregorio Delgado and Ondřej Koukol of EMLab P&K (Phoenix, AZ) and Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), respectively, were able to

iDigBio's Jillian Goodwin and Molly Phillips traveled to St. Marks, Florida, to participate in the League of Environmental Educators (LEEF) Conference at COAST Charter School from March 18-20, 2016.

Using museum specimens to refine models of species distribution

-- Contributed by Charlotte Germain-Aubrey

Using distribution models are crucial for estimating levels of biodiversity at the landscape level. Museum specimens are a significant source of information for these models as they witness current but also past habitats...read more here.

Gehen Sie zu der SPNHC 2016 Konferenz? Are you going to the Society for Preservation of Natural History Collection's (SPNHC) 2016 Conference? It's in Berlin this year, from June 20 - 25, 2016.

Hundreds of volunteers around the world transcribed >30,000 specimen labels at 25 events over four days (Oct 22–25, 2015) in the first Worldwide Engagement for Digitizing Biocollections (WeDigBio) event.  Events spanned a range of formal and informal education venues, from middle-school and undergraduate science classrooms to county libraries to museums, universities, and botanical gardens, such as the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural H

On July 26, 2015, iDigBio hosted an all-day ecological niche modeling (ENM) workshop at Botany 2015, the joint annual conference hosted by the Botanical Society of America, Plant Canada, and their affiliated societies, in Edmonton, Alberta.

On Friday, May 29, Florida State University held a transcription blitz for attendees of the Florida Native Plant Society Annual Conference. This was the third digitization blitz hosted by iDigBio, the Southeastern Regional Network of Expertise and Collections Thematic Collections Network, and FSU's Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium.

The Florida Museum of Natural History and partners hosted the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC) from May 17-23, 2015, at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center in Gainesville, Florida. The theme of the conference was “Making Natural History Collections Accessible Through New and Innovative Approaches and Partnerships”.

SPNHC 2015 30th Annual Meeting and Gala Celebration

Making Natural History Collections Accessible through
New and Innovative Approaches and Partnerships

May 17, 2015 to May 23, 2015

iDigBio staff participated in the Florida Museum of Natural History’s annual event ButterflyFest “A Celebration of Wings, Wildlife and Biodiversity”. The event was held Saturday, October 4, at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville Florida.

The use of sequencing and other molecular data now plays a critical role in the majority of research across the fields of systematics, ecology, and evolutionary biology. In addition, DNA barcoding offers an efficient way to identify specimens for large efforts like biodiversity inventory projects or biological resource management.