A guide to mass digitization

The No spec­i­men left behind: mass dig­i­ti­za­tion of nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions spe­cial edi­tion of Zookeys pro­files and reflects on digi­ti­sa­tion projects from nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions around the world. It brings together arti­cles that explore digi­ti­sa­tion ini­tia­tives in a broad range of envi­ron­ments, includ­ing large ento­mo­log­i­cal col­lec­tions, ver­te­brate col­lec­tions, herbaria, botanic gar­dens and cit­i­zen sci­ence projects. Arti­cles describe meth­ods of cap­ture, doc­u­men­ta­tion and mobil­i­sa­tion of data, demon­strat­ing prac­tices that have matured rapidly in recent years.

Sev­eral arti­cles draw on ini­tia­tives led by OZCAM con­trib­u­tors, includ­ing the Aus­tralian Museum and the Aus­tralian National Insect Collection.

Our col­lec­tions hold enor­mous amounts of use­ful data, and the nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tions com­mu­nity are get­ting bet­ter at access­ing and mobil­is­ing that data. The edi­tors com­ment that they “expect that in the next decade these data will become the new fron­tier for nat­ural his­tory col­lec­tion man­age­ment and research”.

Zookeys is com­pletely open access, and all arti­cles are freely avail­able at: http://www.pensoft.net/journals/zookeys/issue/209/

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