UF receives grant to expand Florida Museum’s digital database

A multimillion-dollar grant is helping UF expand a one-of-a-kind digital library of specimens.

On Tuesday, UF received a $15.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to continue digitizing millions of specimens in collections from across the nation.

IDigBio, a project led by UF, is the first of its kind. The grant will expand the digital database of specimens from collections in 270 institutions in all 50 states, said Larry Page, the iDigBio director and the ichthyology curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.

The database should be able to help researchers make faster and more accurate predictions of the future, including climate change, Page said.

“Basically, the information and data now are readily available,” he said.

IDigBio.org contains 64 million species records and 14 million images, he said.

The museum, in collaboration with UF’s College of Engineering and Florida State University, will share the grant. Of the funding, $3 million will go to FSU researchers.

The program, started in 2011 by the foundation, was given to UF with an original grant of $10 million for five years, Page said.

The new grant will continue the program for another five years and double the size of its database.

Paul Ramey, a spokesman for the museum, said the program has expanded over the years.

“Ideally researchers — or anyone — will be able to go online and view a specimen from a collection from anywhere, wherever it may be,” he said.

Zachary Randall, an ichthyology collections technician, prepares to photograph a specimen at Florida Museum of Natural History.