DIGITAL ACCESS(ION) OF THE INDIANA UNIVERSITY PALEONTOLOGY COLLECTION: LEVERAGING RESOURCES FROM GEOINFORMATICS, DISTRIBUTED CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE, CITIZEN SCIENCE, AND AUGMENTED REALITY

Collection management and stewardship of both physical and digital samples can be a daunting task with two (potentially) distinct workflows, but it doesn’t have to be double the work! Digitization of the Indiana University Paleontology Collection is driving the re-curation of our extensive and significant holdings in blastoids, brachiopods, bryozoa, conodonts, crinoids, foraminifera, rudists, extensive Pennsylvanian plants, and a plethora of Paleozoic marine invertebrates. Here, we detail the extensive utilization of best practices in community engagement through citizen science coupled with robust digitization methods for the automated capture of ultra-high resolution imagery, parallelized computation for photogrammetric model generation, metadata augmentation, and digital preservation all working to facilitate enhanced curation of the collection.

The digitization efforts in the IU Paleo Collection have dramatically enhanced the use of the collections in teaching, research, K-12 outreach, and public engagement. We will provide an overview of the digitization progress thus far, a summary of community resources and tools for the integration of physical and digital collection object curation, and some suggestions (based upon our experiences) for extending the benefits of that curatorial work for the immediate consumption of your data by non-traditional audiences and increased use in education and research. We will highlight our experience with online crowd-sourcing portals, smart-device apps using augmented and virtual reality to engage with digitized collections, and 3D printing to put collections data into the hands of interested individuals quickly, reliably, and sustainably.