Digitization Coordination Workshop NMNH 2023

Digitization Coordination: Combining Project Management & Digitization Efforts to Benefit Collections, Big and Small

Organizing Team: Lauren Cohen, Jillian Goodwin, Holly Little, Sylvia Orli, Rebecca Snyder

Workshop description: Many larger museums and archives such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian’s Libraries and Archives, London’s Natural History Museum, and Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin have begun to implement a centralized approach to digitization of the collections by creating Digitization Coordinator positions. This new effort has initiated a singular vision for digitization which incorporates priorities, workflows, and resources to greatly improve the efficiency and throughput of digitization in collections. Smaller institutions, such as the Natural History Museum of Utah, are now starting to see the benefit of creating a more structured cross-disciplinary approach to digitization, allowing for better awareness and resourcing of the digitization needs in the museum. This effort’s ultimate goal is to accelerate the efficiency, access, and usability of collections.

Benefit: The organizing team believes NMNH could be used as an example of the importance of a Digitization Coordinator efforts. iDigBio would like to assist NMNH with a workshop designed to bring the NMNH community together to help foster connectivity and coordination with a three-day workshop focused on knowledge sharing. This workshop will bring biodiversity digitization professionals together to highlight lessons learned and impacts of such a program and develop best practices to implement at other institutions.

Outcome: The outcome of the workshop, webinars, and follow-up activities will be a paper outlining the importance of consolidating and organizing institutions’ digitization efforts to increase efficiency and resource sharing within institutions.

Dates: May 2-4, 2023