TCN Resources

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How this resource might be useful: These resources are an at-a-glance introduction to existing Thematic Collections Networks (TCNs), including a contact (with their email) who has volunteered to answer questions for each project, and some rudimentary information about the organisms in their proposal. This information may be useful to anyone writing a proposal, interested to see what others are doing, with what digitization technology; or who has recently received funding and is looking for digitization tips and advice from like-minded people.

Brief background: NSF's Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections (ADBC) initiative is funding iDigBio to be the hub to serve the digitized collections from TCNs projects (networks of institutions organized around a theme). Sometimes the theme includes a research question. RDCNs ('Regional' Digitization Collections Networks (managed by Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR))) are like a TCN, but not so closely tied managerially to iDigBio and the TCNs. As the hub, iDigBio seeks to serve all digitized specimens, not only those created by the ADBC program.

References: Intro to iDigBio (from SPNHC 2013) https://www.idigbio.org/sites/default/files/workshop-presentations/spnhc2013/SPNHC_IntroToiDigBioJM.pdf

Anyone seeking information about ADBC, its grand challenges, or how to get involved in this funding stream should look on the NSF website for the solicitations:

For details about writing a proposal to the NSF ADBC program for digitization funding, see here

ADBC Annual Report Info Sheet

Guidelines for Annual Reporting Requirements for Lead Proposal PIs and Collaborative Proposal PIs at iDigBio, TCN and PEN locations. ADBC Annual Report Info Sheet

TCN Bi-Monthly Reports to iDigBio

Reporting Process for TCNs:
Bi-Monthly:

Collect info from all members and compile into one bi-monthly report.

Annually: (we provide this for your edification, note that no annual report is due to iDigBio from the TCNs)

  • For NSF: Each institution that received funding will need to submit their own report. The TCN Lead PI submits a report of their own activities AND the whole TCN activities.

For further details see : NSF Annual Report Info Sheet

TCN Lightning Round Progress Reports at Summit 3, November 2013

Each TCN gave a succinct digitization progress report: https://www.idigbio.org/content/idigbio-summit-iii-0

Summit 4, October 2014

This page has recordings from most of the sessions, including the TCNs: Day 1 recordings

TCN Record Counts

Count Description Count
unique funded TCN/PEN (ADBC) institutions (tip: some institution have more than one TCN/PEN) 250
total collaborators committed to contributing data (see exceptions in roles below, e.g., assisting data contributors) among the 15 TCNs 482
participating in 'unfunded contributor' role (perhaps because they had digitized data/images ready) 47
outreach contributors (no data) 2
in some sort of advisory capacity, e.g., FilteredPush, Symbiota, Citizen Science (no data) 8
foreign participants - among the 'unfunded contributor' above (Copenhagen, Oslo, Bergen, Uppsala, + 2 from Canada) 6
TCN Date #Collaborators / Ingested so far Specimen records ingested Media ingested
EPICC 2015 - 2019 7 / 0 0 0
Fossil Insects (FIC) 2013 - 2017 10 / 2 415,466 0
Great Lakes Invasives (GLI) 2014 - 2017 29 / 0 0 0
InvertEBase 2014 - 2018 7 / 0 0 0
InvertNet 2011 - 2015 15 / 10 8930 7636
Lichens & Bryophytes (LBCC) 2011 - 2015 91 / 79 3,809,038 1,926,820
MaCC 2012 - 2015 43 / 37 1,765,550 503,809
Macroalgae 2013 - 2017 49 / 11 210,140 210,858
MiCC 2015 - 2018 38 / 0 0 0
NEVP 2012 - 2016 24 / 11 364,212 315,104
Paleoniches 2012 - 2015 7 / 5 891,929 0
SCAN 2012 - 2015 30 / 32 1,750,940 161,341
SERNEC 2014 - 2018 92 / 4 179,361 0
Tri-trophic (TTD) 2011 - 2015 33 / 16 1,872,164 323,000
VACS 2013 - 2017 7 / 0 0 0
TOTAL 482 / 187 9,306,949 3,107,196

(Updated monthly :: Sep, 2015)

TCNs at a Glance

Below is a table of individual TCN project information. RDCNs are added below for completeness since they work closely with thematic networks. For more iDigBio TCN info, see the master map for which institutions are in the project: https://www.idigbio.org/content/collaborating-institutions, and see each institution's map (links found below) for project details of the TCN. For a complete list of data publishers see: https://www.idigbio.org/portal/publishers

Note: the number of anticipated collaborators, specimens and images to be digitized is approximate, and based on the text in the proposal.

TCN Date Contact with Email Digitization Methodology Software Interface to iDigBio Organisms # of Specimens/Images # of Collaborators
InvertNet (website) 2011 - 2015 Christopher Dietrich robotic scanning of vials, slides and drawers, crowd-sourcing of label data from images arthropods 56.1M / .89M 16 (1 PEN) (Map)
Tri-trophic (TTD)

(website)

2011 - 2015 Katja Seltmann Toby Schuh (insects), Rob Naczi (plants) imaging herbarium sheets with the Photo eBox Plus and direct transcription of insect labels into a database without imaging. Arthropod Easy Capture, Symbiota, several other institutional databases including Specify insects (Hemiptera, Hymenoptera) and vascular plants 1.2M (insects) 1.2M (plants) / 611,000 32 (Map)
Lichens & Bryophytes (LBCC)

(TCN website), (lichen website), (bryophyte website)

2011 - 2015 Corinna Gries, Tom Nash‎‎, Ed Gilbert label imaging, using OCR for data capture workflow Symbiota lichens & bryophytes 2.3M / 2.3M 76 (4 PENs) (Map)
New England Vascular Plants (NEVP)

(TCN website), (CNH website)

2012 - 2016 Patrick Sweeney robotic scanning apparatus for herbarium sheets, specimen-by-specimen label data capture Symbiota, EMu vascular plants 1.29M / 1.29M 19 (2 PENS) (Map)
PaleoNICHES

(TCN website)

2012 - 2015 Bruce Lieberman specimen-by-specimen label data capture Specify fossils: arthropods, brachiopods, echinoderms, and mollusks 650K / 3600 8 (2 PENs) (Map)
MacroFungi Collection Consortium (MaCC)

(TCN website),(mycoportal website)

2012 - 2015 Barbara Thiers label imaging, crowd-sourcing of label data Symbiota macrofungi 1.39M / 1.3M 38 (2 PENS) (Map)
Southwest Collections of Arthropods (SCAN)

(TCN website), (website)

2012 - 2015 Neil Cobb Visionary Digital workflow, specimen-by-specimen label data capture, plus ~16K specimen image suites (~40K images) Symbiota ground dwelling arthropods .73M / 15,125 16 (3 PENs) (Map)
Fossil Insect Collaborative (FIC)

(website)

2013 - 2017 Dena Smith Visionary Digital workflow, most specimen data already captured Specify, EMu and other (for home institutions) - developing the iDigPaleo Portal for our main interface. fossil insects 500k/200k 7 (1 PEN) (Map)
Vouchered Animal Communication Signals (VACS) 2013 - 2017 Michael Webster digitizing analog sound recordings, imaging specimens & labels birds, frogs, fish and insects 58,374 / 22,939 7 (Map)
Macroalgal Herbarium Consortium (MHC) (website) 2013 - 2017 Chris Neefus imaging herbarium sheets with the Photo eBox Plus Symbiota macroalgae 1.14M / 1.14M 50 (Map)
Great Lakes Invasives (website) 2014 - 2017 Ken Cameron imaging herbarium sheets and animal specimen lots with the Photo eBox Plus Symbiota fish, clams, snails, mussels, algae, plants 1.73M 29 (Map)
InvertEBase 2014 - 2018 Petra Sierwald development of various workflows: data capture from labels; data capture from label images; data capture via voice recognition and OCR Symbiota invertebrates: insects, arachnids, mollusks >2M 7 (Map)
SERNEC 2014 - 2018 Zack Murrell Symbiota plants >3M 45 (Map)
Microfungi Consortium MiCC 2015 - 2018 Andrew Miller Symbiota microfungi >1.2M 38 (Map)
Fossil Marine Invertebrates EPICC 2015 - 2019 Charles Marshall fossil marine invertebrates 6 (Map)

RDCNs and others at a Glance

RDCN Contact with Email Methodology Software Organisms # of Participants
VertNet

(website)

Dave Bloom aggregator / facilitator mammals, birds, fish, herps 63 institutions, 179 collections: mammals (46), birds (47), fish (26), herps (44), paleo (8), tissue (4), special (4) (as of 12Aug2014)
Consortium of California Herbaria (CCH)

(website)

David Baxter aggregator / facilitator custom vascular plants 32
Fishnet2 Collaborative Georeferencing Hank Bart, Jr. georeferencing fish
Mississippi Herbaria Consortium (Magnolia grandiFLORA) Lucile McCook aggregator / facilitator Silver Biology, Specify plants 8
Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria

(website)

Ben Legler aggregator / facilitator plants 57
Texas Oklahoma Regional Consortia of Herbaria (TORCH)

(website)

Wayne Elisens aggregator / facilitator plants 9
Wisconsin Flora (WisFlora)

(website)

Ken Cameron aggregator / facilitator algae, fungi, lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants 26

TCN Social Media Resources

TCN Blogs

TCN Facebook

TCN Twitter

Other resources