In October of 2012, iDigBio was represented by iDigBio project staff Kevin Love, Joanna McCaffrey and Principal Investigator Larry Page at the Florida Museum of Natural History “ButterflyFest”. This annual festival is dedicated to increasing awareness of Florida's butterflies as fun, fascinating ambassadors to the natural world. iDigBio staff promoted inquiry about biodiversity and the grand challenges of the digitization community while advancing a call to action for the conservation and preservation of backyard wildlife and habitats.
iDigBio was invited to participate in this outreach event and staff created an interactive display that enabled event visitors to participate in specimen digitization. In a process developed by iDigBio collaborating institutions, participants were guided by iDigBio project staff through workflows for specimen imaging; the resulting images were posted to the iDigBio Facebook ButterflyFest page. Over the course of 2 days, more than 160 young digitizers mastered the process of specimen digitization, and posted their results on our Facebook page.
