BOTTLENECKS TO THE EFFICIENT DIGITAL CAPTURE OF INFORMATION ASSOCIATED WITH NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS

A recent focus on the digitization and mobilization of natural history collections is both exciting, with the promise of new data being available to researchers, and daunting, in requiring massive effort to capture the primary data, metadata, and in some cases images. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) recently proposed a Global Strategy and Action Plan for the digitization of Natural History Collections (GSAP-NHC) whose core recommendations include: (i) facilitating access to information about non-digitised collection resources; (ii) working with collections to continue to increase the efficiency of specimen data capture and to enhance data quality; (iii) continuing to improve and promote the global infrastructure used to mobilize digitized collection data. A component of the research leading to the recommendations included a survey in 2009 to better assess the bottlenecks involved with digitizing natural history specimens. Over 200 responses were received from curators, researchers, collections managers, and administrators, with the overwhelming barrier to digitizing collections being a lack of funding. This leaves institutions mostly responsible for providing the necessary support, based on limited resources. The uneven digitization landscape created leads to a patchy accumulation of records at varying qualities, and based on different priorities, ultimately influencing the data's fitness for use. The survey also found that although the kind of specimens found in collections and their storage can be quite variable, there are many similar challenges when digitizing including imaging, automated text recognition and parsing, geo-referencing, etc. Thus, better communication between domains could foster knowledge on digitization leading to efficiencies that could be disseminated through documentation of best practices, common tool development, and training.