DIGITIZING THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION NMNH PALEOBIOLOGY COLLECTION - NO LONGER A SISYPHEAN TASK

The Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History Department of Paleobiology (NMNH Paleo) contains tens of millions of specimens spanning the history of life. Digitization of the NMNH Paleo collections began in 1970 when the first specimen record was entered in the primitive database system SELGEM. The process of databasing collections changed little from 1970 to 2004. In 2004, the NMNH Paleo collection data was migrated to the museum database system KE EMu, and KE EMu has been the database of record ever since. Despite the long history of databasing collections records, the rates of digitization have never been high enough to make digitizing the entire collection a realistic undertaking.

In 2010, NMNH began to create and implement written digitization strategic plans and digital asset management plans. These plans help coordinate resources and funding and put digitization priorities into sharp focus. The plans also help enforce standards of specimen record quality that were previously unmeasured. NMNH Paleo collections management subsampled the collections to better constrain the number of specimen records needed to fully document the collection. Then, we focused on defining standards (including georeferencing standards) to make our data more interoperable and useful to the research community. We are exploring rapid digitization workflows currently used in the NMNH Entomology collections. These workflows can create about seven hundred 200-meagpixel images and KE EMu specimen records per day for the modern, non-type bumble bee collection. The images are being fed into the Smithsonian Transcription Center (https://transcription.si.edu/) for crowd-sourced transcription by digital volunteers. Digitizing the entire NMNH Paleo collection is still many years off and there are more logistical challenges to overcome. The recent work in planning and piloting rapid digitization show that digitizing the collections is a realistic possibility.