Georeferencing Working Group

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Overview of the Georeferencing Working Group

The Georeferencing Working Group (GWG) currently consists of 16 members from across the biodiversity natural history collections community from east coast to west coast. If you'd like to get involved, simply contact any member of the iDigBio GWG.

As one of our first projects, we put together a workshop tailored for those with georeferencing experience focusing on training others to georeference. Check out the details at Train the Trainers workshop October 8 - 12, 2012. Follwing the success of that meeting, we put together a second Train the Trainers workshop August 12th - 16th, 2013 to train even more people!

At the same time, we're working on collating georeferencing materials and links to materials here in the Wiki Pages for use by the entire community. We encourage you to share your georeferencing workflows and protocols and add your favorite links to our georeferencing wiki.

Georeferencing Resources

Check out our compiled Georeferencing Resources to help you georeference your natural history collection specimen data. This collection of sites and data was put together by the GWG and the broader community. Please add to it!

Origins and Goals of the GWG

Georeferencing Break Out Group Summary Road Map from the iDigBio IT Standards Meeting in March 2012.These items have been prioritized and presented to the iDigBio steering committee for feedback. The GWG formed from community input from the first iDigBio 2011 Summit. The GWG first met together at the iDigBio IT Standards Workshop where the group compiled an initial list of activities and goals, a road map, for the GWG.You can read more about these here: iDigBio GWG Prioritized Road Map Items.

Imagining a Locality Service

Imagining a Locality Service. (A DRAFT COPY ONLY from the iDigBio GWG).

  • This copy is dated 9 Feb 2015. This is a working copy and in no way represents a final version. It’s a compilation of possibilities. It represents the GWG envisioning the possibilities for locality services and how they might be implemented.
  • The purpose of this document is to describe the functional requirements of a locality service that provides a mechanism whereby data associated with previously georeferenced locality descriptions may be leveraged in the process of georeferencing.
  • Rationale: Current georeferencing workflows available in the natural history collections community today often result in projects georeferencing the same localities over and over again. Development and deployment of a locality service as outlined in this document addresses this time-consuming and expensive issue. Future workflows taking advantage of this service would see several benefits: faster georeferencing as well as improved efficiency and accuracy. In addition, a service of this type facilitates community input (annotation) for georeferences.

GPS Apps Research Project

Join us in our goal to collect data to compare and contrast GPS apps with each other and compared to a GPS unit. You can gather and submit data with us.

Many thanks from the GWG!

GWG Meeting Notes

See what we're up to in the GWG.

Georeferencing Workshops

Need Georeferencing Instructors?

Here's our list of those trained from georeferencing workshops TTT1 & TTT2.


The Georeferencing Working Group(GWG) is working together to develop content and deliverables that will serve the broader digitization community.

Please let us know if you need assistance modifying this page: iDigBio Help Desk

Also, if you would like to learn more about wiki syntax: Mediawiki Wikitext Examples