The overall aim of NA3 is to ensure that SYNTHESYS3 has a clear pathway to impact by making certain that outputs are well publicised to, and utilised by, the broader research and development community – and that the work undertaken and benefits created continue beyond the life of the project. Moreover, the outputs assist in the delivery of other key European initiatives including, but not limited to, LifeWatch.
Review of optimal digitisation technologies and equipment (Deliverable 3.3 of the project)
This review summarises some of the main components and underlying issues with respect to digitisation workflows as evidenced from questionnaire responses from SYNTHESYS partners, as well as providing some key recommendations based on these findings.
Summary findings include the prioritisation for collection digitisation, pre-digitisation curation steps, the range of equipment used, imaging standards used, limits to the rates of digitisation and data storage. This report acknowledges the wide variety of approaches, requirements and equipment needs for natural history specimen collection digitisation, recognising that “a one size fits all” approach is not a viable solution. However, a number of common themes were present throughout all of the responses to the questionnaire, which helped formulate key recommendations.
Read the report in full here.
A digitisation work flow template that can support Users/collection managers when requesting/accessing surrogate collections for their research needs has been developed for the NHM. More are expected to follow as the project progresses. View the template work flow here and the appendix here.
Crowdsourcing reports (Deliverable 3.4 of the project)
These 2-part reports provide a review of crowdsourcing and citizen science in biodiversity research, and recommendations for developing a crowdsourcing strategy for natural history collections.
Phase 1: Crowdsourcing and Citizen science in biodiversity research
Phase 2: Making molehills out of mountains: crowdsourcing digital access to natural history collections
