The Florida Museum of Natural History received a three-year $339,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for researchers to expand their digitized collection of invertebrate specimens.
Digitizing a collection involves capturing data associated with the specimens on an electronic platform to make it available on the Internet, said Gustav Paulay, the museum’s malacology curator.
The digitization aligns with the National Science Foundation’s push to digitize all U.S. biological collections, according to a news release.
“The data includes the identification of the specimens, location and habitat of the collection, the collector, notes about biology, symbiosis, et cetera,” Paulay said. “They may also include DNA sequences and photos.”
He said the collection already contains 500,000 lots, or species from one specific location. With the money from the grant, 100,000 more lots will be digitized. On average, each lot has seven specimens.
Ninety percent of the grant will go toward the salary of student OPS, or Other Personnel Services, performing the work, and 10 percent will go toward supplies for housing specimens, Paulay said.
Students, staff and researchers can benefit from the availability and access of the digitized collection’s summarized information, said Ashley Berkow, collections assistant at the museum and geology junior.
The collection allows researchers the ability to look up any specimen without having to travel to the museum or request it be shipped.
“If everyone’s collection could be more accessible for everyone else to reach, I think it’d make everything much easier,” said Berkow, 20.
She said there are eight people working on the digitization project, and most of them are students.
The workers clean specimens, catalog their information and photograph them, Berkow said.
The Florida Museum of Natural History trails in second behind the Smithsonian Institution for having the largest digitized collection of invertebrates.
Paulay, 55, said the museum has been a leader with this collection, because other institutions are slow to digitize their holdings.
He said his love of nature and his interest in diversity led him to finding his passion in the field and in expanding the digitized collection.
“Think of it as a library of life,” Paulay said. “It makes the enormous amount of information encompassed in our collection broadly available to anyone.”
