A NOVEL APPROACH TO DATA PRIORITIZATION IN PALEONTOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS

For nearly 40 years digitization has been incorporated in museum collection management and has proved beneficial in research, outreach and policy. In the past decade, digitization efforts have gained momentum as funding resources have become widely available and the accessibility of online resources have improved. Many strides have been made to standardize the digitization process and workflow. Nevertheless, as more natural history institutions begin to share their data with online portals, such as iDigBio, inconsistencies and discrepancies among data are becoming apparent. Among the many reasons for these inconsistencies are finances, human resources, space, research objectives, etc. Most of which are out of the hands of collection managers. However, one within the confines of collection management is the prioritization of data.

Using paleontological collections as a case study, a discipline of natural history that has fallen by the wayside in the digitization revolution, a survey of people actively involved in digitization efforts was conducted to create a baseline of the data needed for a specimen to be effectively represented and used in research.

Of the multitude of data currently being entered and shared, 78 fields were selected from multiple sources and categorized into six ranks of priority using the results of the survey. Eleven fields were found to be essential, and 18 were eliminated, with many falling within the intermediate rankings. The results of the survey were used to create and consolidate data standards to aid collection and digitization staff in streamlining the digitization process, eliminating inconsistencies and improving efficiency.