Finding Field Station Data for Research Use: A virtual mini-workshop

The discovery and use of digital field station data for place-based biodiversity research as well as species discovery within a station’s boundaries and service area are essential contributions. Although many field stations curate their own biological collections, at least some of which have been digitized and made available online, field stations have traditionally served as important specimen collecting localities for a variety of researchers across taxonomies, resulting in a potential plethora of station-relevant digital data curated by non-station universities and museums. The rapidly expanding online availability of these data, motivated in large part by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program, has made these data readily available to station scientists. As the U.S. center for enabling and facilitating specimen data digitization and mobilization, iDigBio’s portal (http://portal.idigbio.org/) serves approximately 124 million transcribed specimen records and 25 million associated images. This virtual mini-workshop will teach participants how to find and download records that are relevant to a specific field station and its surroundings, as well as how these records might be used to augment existing station data. Participation is free and but advance registration is required. Please see the workshop wiki page here for more details, including a registration link.